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but it’s nearly impossible to beat gravity when no one is willing to give you a hand.
❤️🥺
Did you know that The Reestablishment said someone had to take control, that someone had to save society, that someone had to restore the peace? Did you know that they said killing all the voices of opposition was the only way to find peace?
“They’re destroying everything,” Adam says, and his voice is suddenly solemn. “All the books, every artifact, every remnant of human history. They’re saying it’s the only way to fix things. They say we need to start fresh. They say we can’t make the same mistakes of previous generations.”
wish I could stuff my mouth full of raindrops and fill my pockets full of snow. I wish I could trace the veins in a fallen leaf and feel the wind pinch my nose.
They want to destroy anything that could’ve been the reason for our problems. They think we need a new, universal language.”
Adam is not speaking to me. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe there was no point hoping he and I could be friends, maybe it’s better he thinks I don’t like him than that I like him too much.
I never wanted to hurt him. I never wanted to hurt the only person who never wanted to hurt me.
so The Reestablishment promised a future too perfect to be possible and society was too desperate to disbelieve. They never realized they were signing away their souls to a group planning on taking advantage of their ignorance. Their fear.
Dirty money is dripping from the walls, a year’s supply of food wasted on marble floors, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical aid poured into fancy furniture and Persian rugs. I feel the artificial heat pouring in through air vents and think of children screaming for clean water. I squint through crystal chandeliers and hear mothers begging for mercy. I see a superficial world existing in the midst of a terrorizing reality and I can’t move.
I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
Maybe I was crazy to consider it, but I’d always hoped that if I were a good enough girl, if I did everything right, if I said the right things or said nothing at all—I thought my parents would change their minds. I thought they would finally listen when I tried to talk. I thought they would give me a chance. I thought they might finally love me. I always had that stupid hope.
So true, always dumb hope.but ultimately left without mother or father.no matter how hard i tried.
The bird on his chest. The bird on his chest. A tattoo. A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It’s flying.
“The world is disgusted by you,” he says, his lips twitching with humor. “Everyone you’ve ever known has hated you. Run from you. Abandoned you. Your own parents gave up on you and volunteered your existence to be given up to the authorities. They were so desperate to get rid of you, to make you someone else’s problem, to convince themselves the abomination they raised was not, in fact, their child.” My face has been slapped by a hundred hands.
“If you have questions, you can find me. I am the only person you need to concern yourself with while you’re here.” Possessive is not a strong enough word for Warner.
“You’ve been on the edge of insanity your entire life, haven’t you? So many people called you crazy you actually started to believe it. You wondered if they were right. You wondered if you could fix it. You thought if you could just try a little harder, be a little better, smarter, nicer—you thought the world would change its mind about you. You blamed yourself for everything.”
“You’ve suppressed all your rage and resentment because you wanted to be loved,”
“Maybe I understand you, Juliette. Maybe you should trust me. Maybe you should accept the fact that you’ve tried to be someone you’re not for so long and that no matter what you did, those bastards were never happy. They were never satisfied. They never gave a damn, did they?”
“Of course you are. You don’t know it yet, Juliette, but you are a very bad girl,” he says, clutching his heart. “Just my type.”
He never talked to me. He never spoke a single word to me, but he was the only one who dared to sit close to my fence. He was the only one who stood up for me, the only person who fought for me, the only one who’d punch someone in the face for throwing a rock at my head. I didn’t even know how to say thank you.
He smiles a small smile. His lips twitch like he’s trying not to laugh. “There’s very little I wouldn’t do for you.”
“I could love you, Juliette—I would treat you like a queen—”
“You could love me, you know.” He’s smiling a strange sort of smile. “We would be unstoppable. We would change the world. I could make you happy,” he says to me.
I just wanted to hear you talk. I wanted you to see me, to smile at me. Every single day I promised myself I would talk to you. I wanted to know you. But every day I was a coward. And one day you just disappeared.
almost everything you’ve learned about the state of our world is a lie.” I stop in place. “What do you mean?” “I mean things are not nearly as bad as The Reestablishment wants us to think they are.” “But there’s no food—” “That they give you access to.” “The animals—” “Are kept hidden. Genetically modified. Raised on secret pastures.”
“We are fed lies because believing them makes us weak, vulnerable, malleable. We depend on others for our food, health, sustenance. This cripples us. Creates cowards of our people. Slaves of our children.
I have an extremely low threshold for disorder; it offends my very being. I shower regularly. I eat six small meals a day. I dedicate two hours of each day to training and physical exercise. And I detest being barefoot.
Now, I find myself standing naked, hungry, tired, and barefoot in my closet. This is not ideal.
“It was . . . very odd, sir. The door had been . . . mangled. As if some kind of animal had clawed through it. There was only a gaping, ragged hole in the middle of the frame.”
And now she’s out there, somewhere, unleashed on society. What a beautiful disaster.
This weakness is foreign to my being. In just two days, one girl has managed to cripple me.
This girl is destroying me. A girl who has spent the last year in an insane asylum. A girl who would try to shoot me dead for kissing her. A girl who ran off with another man just to get away from me. Of course this is the girl I would fall for. I close a hand over my mouth.
that the Reestablishment Registration cards they carry are actually tracking their every movement. That the money their parents make from working in whichever factories they were sorted into is closely monitored. These children will grow up and finally understand that everything they do is recorded, every conversation dissected for whispers of rebellion. They don’t know that profiles are created for every citizen, and that every profile is thick with documentation on their friendships, relationships, and work habits; even the ways in which they choose to spend their free time. We know
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Love is a heartless bastard. I’m driving myself insane.
