Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.”

For so long, almost no one understood how I’ve felt. Why I wanted to do this. I mean, they were impressed, don’t get me wrong. But trying to explain that fire I feel to leave the planet, the one you’re talking about? It is like trying to describe the color blue to someone who has never seen it. And then you come along and it’s like you are describing the color blue to me and I feel such…relief. I’d have followed you anywhere just for that.”

But then, in a shock, Joan feels the most perfect peace overtake her. What a gift. To have known Vanessa, and to have loved her. The way the universe had developed—the way God itself unfolded—was that Vanessa had been here for thirty-seven years. But Joan had been given four of them. She had been given so much of Vanessa when so few ever understood her at all. She had been given that face to sketch for the rest of her life. To spend her days trying and failing to capture her hair. In this one moment of brilliant clarity—a clarity Joan knows she will lose her grasp on within seconds, and have to fight like hell for years to come back to—Joan understands that God gave her something spectacular. A love, and a life, beyond the confines of her imagination.