Spectacular Things

by Beck Dorey-Stein

The worst thing Mia ever did in her life was exist, and she’s been trying to make up for it ever since.

the capacity to love strikes her as cruelly beautiful. At birth, each person unwittingly signs a contract to say goodbye to everyone they’re about to meet. Life is merciless in that way, in its promise to end.

“I’ll cheer for you always,” Mia whispers. “But I’m staying here, and you can choose whether or not you root for me.”

She is coming to understand that love and loss live on the same coin. It’s never heads or tails but joy and agony, grief and delight, spinning in the air, waiting on time and luck to determine not when this chapter ends but how the next one begins.

“Are you making the most of this moment?” he asks. “What did you have to give up to get here? How do you want to leave the field after the game?”

This is how one opportunity can fling open the gates to a thousand more. This is how the underdog becomes the hero.

So much of life has happened to her, but she did this. She chose this place, with these people.