Again Again

by E. Lockhart

And with that recitation, Adelaide Buchwald gave Jack Cavallero her heart. Impulsively, gloriously, openly, she gave it to him, falling in love with someone she did not know, wondering at the curve of his cheek, and the wave of his hair, and the way his shirt draped over his shoulders.

Or maybe our encounter was in another possible world. That is, in one of the countless other versions of this universe, the worlds running parallel to this one, we are already in love.

“Yes!” Adelaide cried. “I am an egg yolk of misery inside a membrane, and the name of the membrane is Mikey broke up with me.”

And I’m just— I want you to know up front that I’m false advertising. I don’t mean to be; I just am.

Her life became this box she was building, a box to house a play about sad, obsessive love.

Think of your happy memories. Know they are still in you. They are part of you. And maybe even they ARE you.

She almost changed how I feel about the thing that I made, and that just feels wrong, do you know? Shouldn’t I decide how I feel about the thing I made?”

The process of making would stretch open the universe until it was frighteningly and gloriously wide with possibility.