The Rest of the Story

by Sarah Dessen

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.

A teen or a child was heartbreaking. It just didn’t fit, like a rule had been broken, and I’d find myself trying to piece together the part of the story that wasn’t told.

If life is a journey, wouldn’t you rather be the person behind the wheel than the one just being carried along?”

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 was like those pieces of litter I sometimes saw swept up on windy days and carried down entire streets. You just look up and there you are.

You can make your life, or life can make you. Was it really that simple of a choice?

Just because the pictures stop doesn’t mean the story does.”

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