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Unfortunately, their high school’s musical director, Ms. Colfax, had an unquenchable zeal for drama by all its definitions. Last year’s production of Peter Pan, for which she’d rented actual flying harnesses all the way from New York City, had resulted in the broken bones of both Wendy and Michael Darling.
He was short and stocky, and he dressed like a dapper old man. Though Darby had been assigned female at birth, he’d socially transitioned during his freshman year.
I support the teenage transmasc old man style
She didn’t think he was guilty, either, but at least he was a better suspect. Zachary was an asshole. He wasn’t even nice to his friends.
Osborne smelled like diesel, tasted like despair, and was surrounded by an ocean of corn. Stupid corn. So much corn.
“Lower your voice, dickpunch.”
Flip-flops, she corrected herself. Not slippers. Regionalisms still tripped her up. Flip-flops weren’t a big deal. But she cringed every time she heard someone order a pop instead of a soda.
“Could we speak clearly for a moment?” she asked. “I’d like us to speak clearly for all moments—present and future.”
It had been so long since Makani had felt any amount of genuine, unadulterated happiness that she’d forgotten that sometimes it could hurt as much as sadness. His declaration pierced through the muscle of her heart like a skillfully thrown knife. It was the kind of pain that made her feel alive.
Only Darby—who also innately understood the concept of otherness—had successfully avoided this pitfall. Just as it was rude and invasive to ask him about his genitalia or sexual preference, it was equally rude and invasive to ask her about her ethnicity. It was the sort of information that should only be volunteered. Never asked for.
The wind rustled the brittle cornstalks. It sounded like a spitting, crackling fire. The dry tassels reached for the open sky while the dead silks pointed down to the muddy earth. Slowly, ever so slowly, the wind strengthened and changed course, and the fields swayed as a single element, rippling outward in a current of mesmerizing waves.
His body was a weary sack. Everything ached.
Big mood
“Because the person we’re trying to find has a certain level of skill with a knife and knowledge of anatomy.”
I detect Jack the Ripper as having provided inspiration for this book.
a woman with a wall of hairsprayed bangs chased behind them anyway. “How does it feel to have lost two of your classmates in only three days?”
CORN PIT! 1 MILE AHEAD! “What’s a corn pit?”
Corn pits rule
Makani was grateful that she didn’t believe in ghosts; she only believed in the ghostlike quality of painful memories. And she was sure this house had plenty.
Makani longed for a piping hot bowl of saimin, a noodle dish so common back home that it was on the menu at McDonald’s.
A real dead body looked different from the ones on television or in the movies. There was nothing artful about it. Nothing positioned. Haley’s body looked lifeless—but not like life had been taken away from it. Like it had never had life.
Makani wondered why discussing a tragedy—consuming every single story about it—was often comforting. Was it because tragedies manifested a sense of community? Here we are, all going through this terrible thing together. Or were tragedies addictive, and the small pleasures that came from them the signal of a deeper problem?
He slumped out of the living room and into the kitchen for an energy drink. It was a new brand—JACKD, in aggressive all caps—and it came in a lurid green can.
He checked his favorite message board, but the usual torch-and-pitchfork crowd were still up in arms over this new company of video game developers that was run entirely by women. His insides shrank with a familiar shame as he quickly left the page. Not that long ago, he’d been one of them.
The killer spun around and lunged. The knife went straight into Rodrigo’s heart and back out,
That requires a LOT of force
The store smelled grainy with a fetid, tangy undertone of livestock, though it contained no animals.
The musty scent of foreboding clung to the town like mold on a decaying house. It was impossible not to breathe its stench into her lungs.
Everywhere. They were everywhere. Those who had left them and those who had been left behind.
Social boundaries were being crossed everywhere. Students still ate with their own kind, but each group sat a little closer to the other groups, and they weaved in and out of one another’s conversations. They were all talking about the same thing, anyway. It was sad that people only got along when everybody was unhappy.
Makani couldn’t think of a single instance of prayer during school back in Hawaii, but it happened all the time here. And everyone was expected to participate. That was the part that bothered her. Makani genuinely hoped that others, including her grandmother, found peace and strength through prayer. But she wasn’t religious herself, and it made her uncomfortable whenever it was forced upon her.
“She’s lucky. The knife nicked her vena cava, but it missed the aorta. If it had nicked that, well, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.”
“There was an injury to her intestines, which requires a long antibiotic therapy, and there was a cut to her right ureter,” the surgeon said. “I’ve placed temporary drains, but when she’s more stable, the ureter will need reconstructive surgery.”
“And now, look. Look what you’re doing to me.” “I’m sorry, Mom—” “I can’t deal with you right now.”
Real fucked up thing to say to your daughter who was almost stabbed to death
“She’s my daughter. And I love her,” Grandma Young said quietly. “But she’s a raging narcissist who married an asshole.”
“The captain was the one who finally noticed and dove in after her. She worked as a lifeguard on a resort, so she immediately started CPR. Jasmine wasn’t breathing.”
He’d only come to the memorial because it was better than being at home, better than being alone with his mother’s lecherous boyfriend. Zachary saw the hatred burning in Terry’s eyes whenever Amber wasn’t looking. What kind of man was jealous over his girlfriend’s son? What kind of man felt threatened by that relationship?
her coppery hair and leggy tallness
“Everybody has at least one moment they deeply regret, but that one moment . . . it doesn’t define all of you.”
Darby was dressed in an old-man tweed sport coat with actual elbow patches, and he was wearing a button-up and sweater underneath it for warmth.
Darby is the best dandy
Moonlight had been named after her favorite fictional horse. Even though hers wasn’t golden (she was a light brownish-red), nor did she have a white mane or tail (hers were flaxen), Rosemarie believed that she was just as loyal a friend as Alanna’s Moonlight had been to the Lioness herself.
<3
Running away from home didn’t change the fact that a person still had to live with themselves.
