The Scorpio Races

by Maggie Stiefvater

It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.

They are beautiful and deadly, loving us and hating us.

Our dad played the tin whistle, when he was home, and our mother performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes every evening,

It wasn’t that we were unfriendly with the rest of the island. We were just friendlier with ourselves.

He’s pretending to look annoyed with the repairs, but I can tell that he is actually cheerful to be doing it. It is against Finn’s code to reveal too much happiness.

The sad thing is this — I’ve gotten used to this fake one. I’ve become willing to wait for the real one to reappear, without realizing I should’ve been working hard to find it again.

I am here on firm ground, but part of me is already down on the beach, and my own blood is singing I’m so, so alive.

“Do we still say grace if it’s only apple cake?” “And a chain saw,” I say. “God, thank you for this cake and Finn’s chain saw,” Gabe says. “Are you happy?”

“God’s always happy,” Finn says. “You’re the one who needs pleasing.”

Padgett is not my concern. My concern is that I have two thousand pounds of wild animal being held by a string and it has maimed two men already and I need to get it away from the rest of them before I lose my tenuous grip.

“You made this?” Finn looks at me. “No, Saint Anthony brought it to me in the night. He was very put out I didn’t give it to you right then.”

It’s a mess, and we’re a mess, and no wonder Gabe wants to leave.

add, hurriedly, “Sir,” because Dad once said that saying “sir” makes gentlemen out of ruffians.

things happen for a reason, that sometimes obstacles were there to stop you from doing something stupid. She said this to me a lot. But when she said it to Gabe, Dad told him that sometimes it just means you need to try harder.

It’s not the easiest thing in the world trying to be treated like an adult during a negotiation when the idea of driving a successful bargain is making you a little sick to your stomach.

He has a way of looking both unimpressed and disinterested when he’s really both of these things.

He says, “I thought —” I know, because it’s what I was thinking, too.

I trust Corr more than any of them. I should not trust him at all.

When I left, he was looking at a bucket as if it was the most complicated invention he had ever seen.

I heard Gabe say once that Mutt Malvern had bigger tits than Peg. Which I suppose is probably true but I remember being very shocked at my brother saying something so crass and unfair, because what say does a girl have in how big her chest gets?

I’m all for women, but this isn’t a woman’s game.” For some reason, this irritates me more than anything else I’ve heard all day. It’s not even relevant.

There are moments that you’ll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and it’s not often they turn out to be the same moments.

Finn, valiant soul that he is, vanishes, leaving me to

Seeing the red car reminds me both that I haven’t been to confession in a very long time and that I’ve done a great many things that I ought to confess.

“I’m sorry that you came all this way,” I say, although I’m not, and it’s unusual for me to lie before a proper breakfast.

“It’s for personal reasons,” I say stiffly. Which is what my mother had always told me to say about things that had to do with fighting with your brothers, getting any sort of illness that had intestinal ramifications, starting your period, and money. And this decision covered two out of the four, so I thought the statement was well earned.

“Kate Connolly,” Father Mooneyham says.

“Father,” I say.

I find this pretty disagreeable, being once again denied the proud, lonely entrance on Dove,

Finn looks up and I say, “Sheep.” He says, “I knew it was a sheep.” I reply, “Next time you can cast your seeing eye into the pasture before I walk through the mud.” “You didn’t ask.”

I’d been very annoyed, because she’d promised me one of Palsson’s cinnamon twists, which sold out very quickly. I’m a bit ashamed to recall that I told Brian that if he died and kept me from my cinnamon twist, I’d spit on his grave.

Nowadays I would’ve only thought the spitting part instead of saying it to his face.

The sisters call me Puck instead of Kate because all three of the sisters agree that you should be called what you want to be called instead of simply falling into what you were given at birth.

move a step backward so he can get away because the last thing I need is for Finn to suddenly decide to become fertile.

Did no one tell him that pain lives in this sand, dug in and watered with our blood? I watch the girl’s

When you traffic in monsters, that’s the risk you run, that you’ll find one too monstrous to stomach.

I think, just then, that in an island populated by monsters, he’s more monstrous than any.

He sounds like I’ve asked him to saw off his left leg. But I know how he feels. He loves the Morris like I love Dove, and what will he have left if he doesn’t have the car to putter over? Just the windows, and we only have five of them in the house.

What am I willing to risk for the possibility of getting what I want?

He is more dangerous every day. We are more dangerous every day.

was considered a good cautionary tale to all the youth of Skarmouth: That would teach us to kiss.

One victory at a time.

“How’s that brother of yours?” Gratton asks me. “Which one?” “The heroic one with the cart.” I sigh so deeply that the collie licks my face to cure me. “Oh, Finn.”

All the while, I’m madly trying to come up with something catchy to say when Sean opens the passengerside door, something that will at once indicate that I remember what he said to me on the beach and also carry that I am not impressed or intimidated, and possibly convey the message that I’m more clever than he thinks, as well. Sean Kendrick opens the door. He looks at me. I look at him.

To not say anything at all seems worse than saying something awful.

“Boys,” she says, “just aren’t very good at being afraid.”

“What do I call you?” “What?” I ask, “Is your name Kate or not?” “Come again?” “It says ‘Kate’ on the board at Gratton’s, but that’s not what Thomas Gratton called you.” “Puck,” she says, her voice soaked in lemon juice. “It’s a nickname. Some people call me that.”

I follow her gaze to a glistening dark back swimming out to sea. My mouth quirks. “It looks like you won, Kate Connolly.” She pats Dove’s shoulder and says, “Call me Puck.”

Finns are generally slow-moving creatures.

too. I wonder how long it will take for me to feel as adult inside as I look outside.