I Am the Messenger

by Markus Zusak

And when I mentioned it to my ma, she said, ‘Ohhh, why don’t you have a bloody cry, Ed.’ You’re going to love my ma. Trust me.

A dead man, I think. He’s not far wrong.

Why can’t the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn’t care, I finally answer, and I know I’m right. It’s like I’ve been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask. The answer’s quite simple: To care.

‘Workin’ my freckle off. As usual.’

Feelings of love and lust fight each other inside me, and I realize I’m drawn instantly to this girl who runs barefoot at five-thirty in the morning.

The girl does laps. The world does laps around me.

because I still think of Edgar Street. I realize that for every good message, there will always be one that will agonize me.

And they’re wrong. The girl deserves better.

My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.

And discomfort. Squeezed in, between us. She soon says, ‘You’re my best friend, Ed.’ ‘I know.’ You can kill a man with those words. No gun. No bullets. Just words and a girl.

I realize that nothing belongs to her any more and she belongs to everything.

I’m hurting people that need hurting, when inflicting pain goes against everything that comes naturally to me.

drop some along the way, rest a few times, but in the end, each book makes it home. My arms are killing me. I didn’t know words could be so heavy.

It’s not a big thing, but I guess it’s true – big things are often just small things that are noticed.

Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.

I also fear that nothing really ends at the end. Things just keep going as long as memory can wield its axe, always finding a soft part in your mind to cut through and enter.

I wish I could hold up that knife and tear open the world. I’d slice it open and climb through to the next one.