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People live through such pain only once; pain comes again, but it finds a tougher surface. WILLA CATHER, The Song of the Lark
contralto,
“It’s fine,” Makani said, because it was easier than saying it wasn’t.
And, much like a rumor, it did contain a kernel of truth. It was just missing the rest of the cob.
There were no tables or benches, only a few stunted trees scattered about, so students sat on the concrete ground. Unwind a spool of barbed wire, and it could have been a prison yard, but even prisoners were given tables and benches.
Osborne smelled like diesel, tasted like despair, and was surrounded by an ocean of corn. Stupid corn. So much corn.
she moved with a confident sway in her hips. It was a false confidence, designed so that people wouldn’t ask questions.
her heart skipped like a scratched vinyl record.
Sometimes she felt like a child. Sometimes she felt like a caregiver. She didn’t want to be either of those things.
lomi salmon.
she certainly understood the quiet desperation behind this lone act of vandalism.
viburnum
She wondered if she’d broken Ollie’s heart last summer. Had he broken hers? Or had it already been too broken to make a difference?
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.
They needed to speak clearly, yes. But only about the things that needed to be spoken about.
unironic,
No matter how many times she’d stuck up for him with her friends, she couldn’t stop underestimating him herself.
carrion.
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.
coir
saimin,
In the darkest hours of the night, her own memory was keen and cruel.
Did seeing the proof of this make you more paranoid or more careful? Or did it just harden you?
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?
the town’s collective mind was many tentacled and far-reaching.
she wasn’t surprised that they’d called her grandmother—asking about her, instead of asking her directly. They’d met humanity’s minimum requirement.
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.
Anyone could look sinister when viewed through the lens of fear—even
winter Goth.”
innumerable
It was like being a Katrina after 2005; it only brought one thing to mind. But at least no one could mistake a woman for a hurricane.
“It’s nothing.” “Your nothing and my nothing are two very different things.”
The local truck, Omaha trucks, and cable news trucks were parked side by side with Dateline and 48 Hours. There’d been a mass shooting at a university in Florida with eleven dead and six injured. There’d been a suicide bomber at a shopping mall in Istanbul with thirteen dead and twenty-seven injured. Yesterday’s headlines were terrifying, but they were also so terrifyingly commonplace that the eyes of the country had turned to Osborne.
Tethered to his grip, she felt safe. They ran together.
It felt chillingly empty without the tick of the grandfather clock. The heart of the house was dead.
Three minutes and fourteen seconds. She’d almost been killed, and her mother had given her three minutes and fourteen seconds. And she’d turned it into her problem.
circuitous;
The barrage was endless. Immeasurable. Sometimes it hurt because everyone had the wrong idea about her, but usually it hurt because it felt like they had it right.
koans
He felt more comfortable on the outside of any crowd.
most of the disappointment was inside his own head.
