We Were Liars

by E. Lockhart

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound, then from my eyes, my ears, my mouth.

One day I looked at Gat, lying in the Clairmont hammock with a book, and he seemed, well, like he was mine. Like he was my particular person.

I am not talking about fate. I don’t believe in destiny or soul mates or the supernatural. I just mean we understood each other. All the way.

I understood, and I managed to erase Granny Tipper from conversation, the same way I had erased my father. Not happily, but thoroughly.

Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces.

“Do you still miss Gran?” I ask him as we head toward New Clairmont. “Because I miss her. We never talk about her.” “A part of me died,” he says. “And it was the best part.” “You think so?” I ask. “That is all there is to say about it,” says Granddad.