Ramona Blue

by Julie Murphy

We’re both too realistic to make promises we can’t keep.

but Grace is the kind of girl who never has to look at a price tag or tell the clerk at the grocery store to put a few items back.

this hit home for me. i had so many friends like this in high school

The moon hangs in the sky, chasing the horizon, as the sun whispers along the waterfront.

I guess, growing up, most kids wonder what they will do for a living. But for me, there was never any worry over what the job would be, just how soon I could start.

relatable

My sport—the special skill I’ve developed my whole life—is surviving, and that doesn’t leave much room for following Cinderella dreams.

Sometimes catastrophes split you in half, and even if all the pieces are there, they might not ever fit back together.

Whenever I said the words poor or broke, she would give me a limp smile and tell me about one of the handful of times she went without in some way.

An ache tears through my stomach, and I think that maybe she meant more to me than I did to her.

“Ramona Blue,” he says. “Everything she touched turned a hue.”

Forget butterflies. I feel like I’ve got a handful of bees buzzing around in my stomach.

hehe this was cute

It must be exhausting to be so responsible.

it truly is

Sometimes when I don’t know how to explain my relationship with my mom, I can only describe it as a void.

accurate

I hate this idea that boys are thinking about sex nonstop and girls are thinking about—what? Stationery and garden gnomes? No.

I can feel the pain we both share like a cloud hovering over us.

I feel the impact of her absence during every lull in conversation and in the quiet morning hours when I ride my paper route.

I’ll never figure out how it is that some people can work so hard and get paid so little, while so many people who are paid the most hardly work at all.

It seems to me that childhood ends and adult life begins the moment you stop believing your parents can rescue you.

But soon he’ll leave. He’ll leave like everyone else, and I’ll be here. Forever Peter Pan.

there’s something about tonight that feels like the end of a good song.

My entire life is an unknown. It’s an ocean without a floor. A pool without an end.

I will survive, because I have survived.