The Rest of the Story

by Sarah Dessen

Travel is always good for the soul, though, isn’t it?”

After loving someone you couldn’t depend on, you realize how important it is to trust someone will do what they say. It’s such a simple thing, not to promise what you can’t or won’t deliver.

He took my anxiety personally, as if he’d broken me or something. Which was nuts, because all he’d ever done was hold me together, even and especially when the rest of my world was falling apart.

No matter where you are, home or the strangest of places, everyone wants to look like they know where they’re going.

The past was always present, in its way, and you can’t help but remember. Even if you can’t remember at all.

“I’m a Payne,” I explained. “We’re a careful people.” He considered this, and me, before saying, “Well, I’m a Price. We’re mostly known for sticking our fingers into light sockets.”

There were lots of ways to love someone, I guessed, both by remembering and forgetting.

But all my life I’d felt more like an observer than an active participant. Beside the wheel, not behind. It was safer there, but could be lonely too, or so I was now realizing. Maybe there was a middle ground between living too hard and living at all. Maybe, here, I was finding it.

“I wish I remembered,” I said. “I lost a lot. Like, everything from this place.” “Wasn’t lost,” he said. “You just left it here.

“A life isn’t just the pages you know, it’s everything. We just can’t see what’s happened yet.”