Dry

by Neal Shusterman

“All right, out of the truck!” says the soldier using his no-nonsense boot-camp voice. “I SAID OUT! NOW!”

Oh fuck

“Do you know the concept of social triage? No? Because I do. In a mass emergency, you help the ones you can, and the ones you can’t help, you move out of the way.”

something catches his eye by Daphne’s bedside. There’s a little orange prescription bottle that wasn’t there before.

Aww Jacqui

Things pass. Even big things. And when they’re far behind us, they don’t look big anymore.

Everything in life is a lesson, Kelton. Learn from it. Better yourself. Become stronger.

“This is like the crap that gets caught behind furniture cushions,” Jacqui comments, “but on a cosmic scale.”

😂

it’s not only things that get lost behind the cushions of the world. People do, too.

I have found that the elderly can be either deranged or sagacious. It’s a complex equation made up of their life experiences, the advanced nature of their years, plain old genetics, and how pissed off life has left them.

The bug-out has bugged out. The place is a mess.

Oh shoot....

As I recall, Garrett had also wanted me to pull the trigger on the blond water-zombie at the beach.

Indeed. Garrett has got a problem

If I survive this, I’ll have a shirt made.

That’s so Kelton like 😂

It sets me off giggling, which gets everyone else laughing. And it occurs to me that even in these do-or-die moments, there’s still space for us to laugh. I guess that means we still have some fight left in us.

“Tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself for a while,” Alyssa says. Then she adds, “Yesterday, too.”

The truth is, loneliness and hormones and parents who keep you like a fish in a bowl can do weird things to a person.

“Part of your punishment is that we’ll never be even.” And I get that. The worst part about doing something inexcusable is that you can never take it back. It’s like breaking a glass. It can’t unbreak. The best you can do is sweep it up, and hope you don’t step on the slivers you left behind.

That’s when I realize that something has changed. It takes a moment for me to realize what it is. The truck is no longer idling. The engine is off. Not only that, but the keys are gone. And so is Henry.

Fucking Henry!!!!

We’re always told not to judge a book by its cover, but there is nothing ambiguous about these two. Some people lack the imagination to do anything but embrace a stereotype and let it define them.

And she hugs him in a way that sisters never hug brothers, except when they’re almost shot in the head.

Yep I can confirm that

Because I have a sudden burst of energy.

Shit...

this is the true core of human nature: When we’ve lost the strength to save ourselves, we somehow find the strength to save each other.

Meanwhile, I watch as the plane returns to the lake, skimming water from its surface, filling up for a second run.

I can finally breathe now... that was close and had me sucking in my breath

More than two hundred thousand souls perished during humanity’s hiatus.

Even though school would have ended by now, they have to finish the year. “Healthy closure,” they said. Because a water-zombie apocalypse is not truly over until kids go back to school.

“And then maybe we can ask again, what we are to each other?” I hold out my hand to shake. “It’s a date.”

Warmed my heart

Wasn’t it Jacqui who told us the human body is sixty percent water? Well, now I know what the rest is. The rest is dust, the rest is ash, it’s sorrow and it’s grief… But above all that, in spite of all that, binding us together … is hope. And joy. And a wellspring of all the things that still might be.

Is that a tear I see? 🤫