Shadow Me (Shatter Me, #4.5)

by Tahereh Mafi

Kenji,

Eeeee Kenji!!! Bro ilysm <3

I’m lonely but I’m not alone. My body works, my brain works, I’m alive. It’s a good life. I have to make a conscious effort to remember that. To choose to be happy every day. If I didn’t, I think my own pain would’ve killed me a long time ago.

“Kishimoto, if I considered other people’s mediocre standards a sufficient metric by which to measure my own accomplishments, I’d never have amounted to anything.”

“I don’t think you do, actually. In fact, I hope you don’t. I wouldn’t want you to know how I feel right now. I wouldn’t wish that for you.”

So he’s been waiting. For the right moment.

Nooooo wait ik what's going to happen!!

I’m so happy for my friends. I love them, even when they piss me off. I care about them. I want their joy. But it still hurts a little when it feels like, everywhere I look, everyone seems to have someone. Everyone but me.

Instead, I’m a big, raw, bleeding heart, and I spend my days pretending not to notice that I want more. That I need more. Maybe it sounds weird to say, but I know I could love the shit out of someone. I feel it, in my heart. This capacity to love. To be romantic and passionate. Like it’s a superpower I have. A gift, even.

And I’ve got no one to share it with. Everyone thinks I’m a joke.

Kenjiiiii I'm here <3 <3

I wonder if she has any idea what she’s doing to me.

He sounds like Warner ;)

“You reek of it.” He nods at me, my body. “You’re practically emanating lovelorn agony.”

“Damn princess,”

Don't agree with the language, but there should be a comma

They clearly have crazy chemistry. Their relationship never made a lot of sense to me—I couldn’t understand how someone like Warner could be an emotional partner to anyone, much less someone like Juliette: a girl who eats, sleeps, and breathes emotion. I rarely saw him emote anything. I worried that Juliette was giving him too much credit, that she put up with too much of his bullshit in exchange for—I don’t even know what. A sociopath with an extensive coat collection?

This must be the secret Warner said she was hiding—Nazeera must be a traitor to The Reestablishment.

Uh nope

Nouria

Wait is this his wife?!

I don’t think anyone realized just how much we relied on the internet for literally everything until the lights went off.

Literally

Because it’s not the pain that’s unendurable. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the hopelessness that makes you reckless.

back I

Comma

Symposium starts in”—I glance at my watch; my eyes widen—“thirty minutes.

No no no poor Winston!!