More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
So I drifted like a balloon in the sky, waiting for someone to anchor me back down, but no one ever did. It’s been years since she stuck her nose in my life and figured out what was going on. Me and Principal Prichard are doing things we shouldn’t be doing. I have a journal where I confess all the horrible things I do to people. My friends are backstabbers who hate me, and I haven’t laughed in my family’s presence in over four years.
“Talk, Daria. Fucking talk.”
“Why!” I throw my hands in the air. “So you can hold it against me the first chance you get? So you can laugh at me with your friends? The prissy girl with the first-world problems? So you know how weak I am? Why should I talk to you? I’m nothing to you. I’ve always been your nothing. The bitch who drove your twin sister away. Don’t pretend otherwise just because we shared a few sloppy, illicit kisses. Don’t act like you give me a sliver of thought when I’m not in front of you. I’m not Adriana.”
He takes my face in both his hands and brings my nose to brush his. “No,” he hisses. “You’re not Adriana. I agree.”
This is big. Huge, maybe. He keeps me everywhere he goes.
“What’s eating you, Daria Followhill, queen bee, cheer captain, and the most popular girl in the county?”
“I love myself. Look at me. I’m Daria Followhill.” I motion to my body with my hands. He shakes his head. He’s not buying it.
“When I look in the mirror, I see an orphan. A football player. A student. A grieving brother. A guy whose dream is to attend Notre Dame so he can escape the shithole that’s his life and break the poverty cycle. I know who I am. But who are you? Tell me what you see, Daria.” His breath fans across my hair. “Help me get into this beautiful, awful head of yours.”
My hand travels to my stomach, and I grab a thin tire of fat. “I’m too curvy.” My hand flies to my face, a finger rolling over my nose. “My nose is too small, and my eyes are too big. And my hair always looks hella dry.”
“Confide in me, my hideous little monster.”
I want to tell him to stop. That he has a girlfriend and a child and I’m not like that. A Jerry Springer-style homewrecker. But for the first time since yesterday, I feel seen.
“I’m the most jealous and petty person I know,” I admit. “That’s because you...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“My soul is black, Penn. When I see competition, I smash it before it grows. I’m so vindictive.” “No, Daria, you are so human. That’s what you are.”
“Your insecurities are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He bites my earlobe softly, and when I open my eyes, I see that he is still staring at us in the mirror.
“Down here, hideous little monster.” I hear a chuckle. He is fully clothed, lying in the bathtub, smiling up at me with that grin that can crack up the sky and pull the sun closer.
Totholes—children of the Hotholes.
“No son of mine is going to the wrong college just because they’re shelling out an economy class plane ticket,” Jaime says. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m not your son because I can’t be picky. Sir.”
It pains me that I know who it is without looking. Only one person in this house hasn’t given up on me, and that’s because he never believed in me in the first place.
“Leave it, Penn,” I hear my mother say, and I can practically envision her taking a generous sip of her wine. “That’s just Daria being Daria.”
You’re being eaten and picked apart, but your pulse is still there.
Talk. I frown at the unanswered message I sent her an hour and a half ago.
The worst part wasn’t that Mel ignored Daria’s existence. It was that she was casual as fuck about it. As if her daughter was an annoying fly.
Mel is batshit scared of her daughter, who acts like anything but her daughter, and Jaime is tired of choosing sides. And Bailey is in the middle of this mess, gathering some bomb-ass material for her future therapist to work on.
“Sir, I really appreciate your generous offer, but for the millionth time, I ain’t about to take your hard-earned money.” “It’s not that hard-earned, boy. The good thing about money is that when you have enough of it, it creates itself.”
Talk is code for meeting in the basement. We can’t risk it in case her parents decide to go through her texts.
mesmerized by how beautifully she fits under my palm. As though she was born to have my hands on her.
“I don’t want to tell you anything.” “You don’t have a lot of options.” “I have friends,” she shoots. “No. You don’t,” I say softly. “You have people you hang out with, and you’ll never give them a truth. Not even a half-truth. Not even a fucking quarter. Now look at me.”
I cup her head and pull her into me, sinking into her bed and cradling her.
“Pretend that I’m your friend.” “I don’t have any friends, remember?” “Sucks to be you.” There’s no menace in my voice. She shrugs. “So why are you here?” “Because it sucks to be me, too.” Because it sucks less when we’re together even though I should hate you.
I envelop her. Even when Daria is growling like an injured animal in my ear. Even when the sea glass necklace, her sea glass necklace, burns a hole in my back pocket, right next to her pompom string, demanding to go back to its rightful owner. Even when a scream rips from her throat, and I need to cover it with my palm. I hold her.
“Go to your girlfriend. She needs you more than I do.” She does. Addy and Harper need me desperately. But they’re not who I want to be with.
“I bet this is your first time breaking.” I wipe her tears away. “I used to break all the time. Under a bridge. Next to a bunch of homeless people. I used to scream at the river...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“I couldn’t talk for days afterward. I once punched my own face to see if I could cry. The answer is no, by the way. And when my mom died? I went to the snake pit hoping Vaughn would kill me. I let him fuck me up just so I could feel something. Because, you see, I’m the tin man. I have no heart. Not since Via left. She was my entire world. Adriana and Harper, I take care of them, but it’s not the same. My heart was rusty before she left, but after? After, it was gone. Is that real enough for you, Daria Followhill?”
“You’re Saturn,” she whispers. “Made of iron-nickel and surrounded by protective rings of ice and rock.”
After all these years, I still want to ruin her. Then put her back together. Then do it again and again and a-fucking-gain.
Why were you home late today?” she asks. Because I knew you’d be here. “I saw Adriana,” I lie.
And when she breaks within my arms, I glue her back, tuck her in bed, and kiss her forehead, not letting go until she is sound asleep.
Hate motivates much more than love. Love is content and peaceful. Happy people aren’t driven. They simply…exist. Now, us, hateful people, we’re something else. Hungry and desperate. Hateful people make the best lovers.
I feel like a piece of the jigsaw, the one forgotten under the carpet that no one bothers to look for.
Penn is right. The minute you admit something, it becomes real.
Neither of us acknowledges that it’s my birthday today. That I didn’t get a cake, or a card, or a hug. That my family thought they could skip this day just because they agreed to let me have a party in a few weeks.
“Showing you that I might be a punk, but you’re the hideous little monster who is falling for him.”
He and Dad are the only people I would follow.
He finishes his bottle of beer and throws it against a tree. It’s a good throw, and the bottle shatters into tiny pieces.
“This is what it feels like to hold rage inside. That shit’s toxic for you. You’re either going to have to face your mother, your friends, your principal, your fucking life, or prepare to feel like you’re holding the smoke in your lungs for a very long time. Because, baby, it only gets worse from here on out. The older we get, the deeper the shit we’re swimming in gets.”
“Your parents won’t give a shit if I fuck you on the dining room table while Bailey helps herself to another serving of pie.” I raise my hand and slap him. Hard.
“Shit. You actually think that.”
“You think you’re that unlovable.” “Stop,” I say, plead, beg. I’m not sure he is wrong. “Please stop.”
“So fucking gorgeous, so fucking popular, so goddamn despi...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“Why are they ignoring your birthday, Skull Eyes? Tell the truth.”
