Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

The boy is aware that his father is staring intently at him now, as if trying to deliver good sense through the air.

Jane and Bruce can’t help but locate the spot where the Twin Towers used to be, the same way the tongue finds the hole where a tooth was pulled. Their sons, who were both toddlers when the towers fell, accept the skyline as it is.

He wants his sons to question blowhards too, but not yet. He should have amended the declaration to: Question everything, once you’re grown up and in full command

of your powers and no longer living at home, so I don’t have to watch and worry.

The two teens regarded each other for a moment, heads tipped to the side, and then Jordan’s face opened—it might as well have split in half—with a grin. He offered this stranger what looked like everything: his joy, his love, his brain, his complete attention. He gave that girl a face that Bruce, who has studied his son every single day of his life, had never seen. Never even knew existed.

A cascade of white lilies. They are left over from a wedding held

in the room the night before. This smell will keep several family members out of flower shops for the rest of their lives.

It feels unkind that they are shoving their emotions at him when his own sadness and fear are so vast that he has to hide from them.

They have somewhere to start, even if it is the worst place imaginable.

His mom looks stressed, like this lady looks stressed, though he didn’t understand why until he grew up and started to rattle like a boiling pot about to lose its lid.

This is how memories appear now, like a burglar bursting through a locked door without warning.

After all, if you think about one memory for most of a day, is that not your present?

The brothers had long conversations about whether Snape was in fact a bad person.

Edward spends every night reaching for unconsciousness as if it were a rock in the middle of a river, while a fierce current pulls him away. His fingertips sometimes brush the rock, and he manages a nap. Never a full night’s rest.

It was the reason neither Florida nor any of her friends could afford health insurance—the industry had nothing to do with providing healthcare; it was designed to extract the maximum amount of money from each person.

If you’re bright, you’re slowed down by the fact that other kids can’t move at your pace. And in part because there are so many kids, they run the schools like factories, or, dare I say, jails. You’re put in lines, moved when the bells ring, allowed to run around in a high-fenced yard once a day. None of this is conducive to deep thinking or creativity. You start to go deep into a subject, and a bell rings to pull you out of it.”

“I love the Internet, or at least I used to, but it’s not where you go for the truth.”

In his fully alert state, the world looks exactly as dangerous as it is.

“What are you talking about?” he says. “You know I don’t understand anything.”

“We both knew it couldn’t go on forever.” He thinks, I didn’t.

People fly despite knowing that a certain percentage of airplanes crash every year. They “know” that fact yet find ways to qualify, and therefore soften, the knowledge. The most common qualification is the fact that it is statistically more dangerous to travel in a car than in an airplane. In absolute numbers, there are more than five million car accidents compared to twenty aeronautic accidents per year, so, in fact, flying is safer. People are also helped by etiquette; because commercial air travel is public, a kind of group confidence comes into play. People take comfort in one another’s presence. Sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, they believe that it is impossible for this many people to have taken a foolish risk at the same time.

But he’d never figured out that interpersonal language. He’d done well on every academic test but remained stupid socially.

There have been many occasions when Veronica’s been treated like a second-class citizen, so she understands the bad taste it puts in your mouth. She knows roasted nuts won’t erase that taste, but she hopes the gesture tells the woman that she’s not alone.

She will quite simply love everyone who crosses her path, starting with the girl beside her. She will act as a mama to Linda, who badly needs one, and a grandmother to her baby.

as soon as his eyes are closed, something is different. The darkness inside him has taken on a new shade; there’s a richness to it. It’s slippery, like velvet.

Edward used to think that what had happened had happened only to him, but he knows Shay has been changed, and he knows the writers of the letters have been changed too, so the ripple effects feel possibly infinite.