The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

by Brittany Cavallaro

I tended to spend too much time with my favorite things, loved them too hard until I wore them down. After a while, they became more like a shorthand for who I was and less like things I actually enjoyed.

one who looked a little more like a volunteer fireman and less like a volunteer librarian.

Maybe this is what happened when you built a friendship on a foundation of mutual disaster. It collapsed the second things righted themselves, left you desperate for the next earthquake.

He is a boy and he is in love with me, but only because the world bores him. His world is boring because it loves him, you see. Of course it does. And so it all comes so easy to him, and his world grows wretched and long, and he begins casting around for something of interest in all that dark. If I am broken, at least my hazard lights are appealing to a boy like him.

It’s strange to grieve for your former self, and still I think it’s something that any girl understands. I’ve shed so many skins, I hardly know what I am now—muscle, maybe, or just memory. Perhaps just the will to keep going.