Along for the Ride

by Sarah Dessen

I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents’ attention was to disappoint them or fail.

But you can’t unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know.

I’d always had to work so hard to keep my mother’s interest, wresting it away from her work, her colleagues, her students, my brother. I’d often wondered if it was ridiculous to feel this way. Clearly, though, my instincts had been right: her attention was not only hard come by, but entirely too easy to lose.

When you don’t know where you’re going, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to have more than you need.

“Just because something’s damaged doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be treated with respect.”

Relationships don’t always make sense. Especially from the outside.”

you didn’t fail. You just opted out. There’s a difference.”

I had these experiences, these tales, more of this life. So maybe it wasn’t the fairy tale. But those stories weren’t real anyway. Mine were.