Opal (The Raven Cycle, #4.5)

by Maggie Stiefvater

She was to remember that she was a secret.

“She was never tame,” Adam replied. “Only afraid.”

and the man who once drove halfway down the driveway while Adam and Ronan were gone but then backed out and went away.

MR GRAY!!!!

“But you’re a psychic.” “Exactly.” Adam had laid out his words as carefully as they’d put down their cards on the table. “Am I?” “Of course,” one of the other ladies had said. “Did you think you’d lost everything when Cabeswater died?” “Yes,” Adam had whispered, and Opal had felt a rush of love for him.

She loved him the best when he was very sad or very serious or very happy. Something about his voice breaking filled her with feeling, and something about the vacancy of his expression when he was thinking hard felt like she was looking at a dream with nothing bad in it, and something about when Ronan made him laugh so hard that he couldn’t stop made her love him so hard that she felt sad because one day he would get old and die because that was what things with animalness did.

What’s the phrase for that?” “Self-defeating,” Adam had replied. “Fuck you. Catch-22. That’s what I meant.” “You dreamt the first Cabeswater without a Cabeswater.” “I just need it to not suck.”

“Good thought, Parrish. We need to dream you a new car, after all.”

but she also had no shame, because Ronan hadn’t dreamt any of that for her, either.

Instead she dug herself holes in fields and lay in them or made herself nests of stolen lawn furniture cushions.

“Damn you.” That was a swear that Opal was also not supposed to say (but sometimes did, over and over again, to the sleeping cows, at a whisper, to see if the shock would wake them).

she could build Ronan’s sadness into a raft when he was drowning in quicksand.

But the animal world was full of rules, and all of them were rules that made things smaller and more expected. Opal had no power here.

“I’m being a shithead.” “You are. And a shitfoot. Where are your shoes?” “Still under the table.”

“You’ll get into one of the others,” Ronan told Adam eventually. “You’re not going to have to make another list. It won’t be what you imagined, but it’ll be just as good.” “Remind me of that later.” “Count on it.”