More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“No one has anything to get up for. Life’s pointless and everyone just gets up anyway. That’s how the human race works,” she says, and hands me a coffee. “I don’t like how the human race works.” “No one likes how the human race works,” she says.
Dad’s been on the down side since Mum left, with no sign of stopping his post-divorce habit of eating whole blocks of peppermint chocolate every night while he rereads Dickens.
“What’s that wonderful Dickens line from Great Expectations?” Dad asks. “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
Secondhand books are full of mysteries, which is why I like them.
Pytheas, Why are you writing to me? According to everyone at school, I’m a freak. George Dear George, I quite like freaks. Pytheas
Rose would stop by after her shift at the hospital and hold me so Mum and Dad could get some sleep.
heard she gave you the car,” Rose says when she opens the door. “How’d it feel to drive here?” “Pretty good.” “You were scared the whole way, right?” “Half the way,” I tell her, looking around.
“I tried to pass Year 12,” I say, in an effort to defend myself. “If you’d been trying, you’d have passed. You could pass Year 12 with your eyes closed.” I think of myself lying behind the school when I should have been in class—the sun on my face and the warm grass at my back. “My eyes were closed most of the time.”
“First trip. Wherever you go, separately or together, wherever it is, I’ll fund it.” Rose didn’t make promises she didn’t intend to keep. Cal and I started planning. We’d go together, that much we were certain about. I’d wait till he finished Year 12. The hard part was deciding where. “The offer still stands,” Rose says tonight. “Pick a place.” I pick the past.
At the funeral, though, after everyone had left the chapel, I stayed. I was waiting for Cal’s ghost. I still didn’t believe in them, but I had this crazy idea that because he did, they might be possible. “See, Rach, I’m here,” I imagined him saying as he held up his arms to show the sunlight shining through. Ghosts are nothing but dust and imagination, though, and eventually the funeral director gently told me I had to leave. There was another funeral starting soon.
“How be life, Henry?” she asks, and I tell her, “Life be shit, Mai Li.” “Shit, why?” “Shit because Amy dumped me.” She stops handing out menus to customers and gives the news the pause it deserves. “Life be fucked then, Henry,” she says,
“She’s my soul mate,” I tell her. “Then I am worried about your soul,”
“Do you mind? I’m having a private moment here, Rachel.” I crouch on the floor beside him. “Here’s a tip for a private moment: don’t have it on the floor of the girls’ toilets.” “The girls’?” he asks. “The added extras didn’t give it away?” He lifts his head and squints at the unit in the opposite corner. “Not a mailbox?” “Not a mailbox, Henry,”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Notes written on title page Where’s my Mr. Darcy? He lived in the 1800s, so he’s dead, right? He’s a character in a book; he can’t be dead. If he’s a character in a book, it’s pretty sad for you to like him. Fuck you. You can’t write fuck you on Pride and Prejudice. It’s a classic. Who are you? Who are you? Except for desperate. You’re writing in the book. You’re answering me. Who’s desperate? I don’t mind the book. I just mind people setting up a character in a book as the perfect guy. I never said he was perfect. He’s flawed. And you’re looking for a flawed
...more
