The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

by V.E. Schwab

What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?

Don’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke? Darling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.

“And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”

If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.

“A dreamer,” scorns her mother. “A dreamer,” mourns her father. “A dreamer,” warns Estele. Still, it does not seem such a bad word. Until Adeline wakes up.

Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget. Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books. Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.

But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.

So she longs for the mornings, but she settles for the nights, and if it cannot be love, well, then, at least it is not lonely.

Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?

“I remember you.” Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.

And it’s the best sound she’s ever heard. She wants to throw her arms around him, wants to hear it again, and again, the impossible word filling her like air, making her feel solid. Real.

Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.” She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning. To find a way, or make your own.

“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”

she is a stranger now.

It’s never been the high he craved, anyway, not exactly. It’s just the quiet.

Take a drink every time you hear a lie.

They want you. (Not you.) They need you. (Not you.) They love you. (Not you.) You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don’t exist. (Not you.) (Never you.) They look at you and see whatever they want . . . Because they don’t see you at all.

Because for the first time in months, in years, in his whole life, perhaps, Henry doesn’t feel cursed at all. For the first time, he feels seen.

I have found a way to leave a mark, she wants to say to him. You thought you could erase me from this world, but you cannot. I am still here. I will always be here.

“I think he wanted to erase me. To make sure I felt unseen, unheard, unreal. You don’t really realize the power of a name until it’s gone. Before you, he was the only one who could say it.”

the simple truth is that he would have sold his soul for less, would have traded an entire life of this for just a day—an hour, a minute, a moment—of peace. Just to numb the pain inside his chest. Just to quiet the storm inside his head. He is so tired of hurting, so tired of being hurt.

“Even if everyone you met remembered,” Luc says, “I would still know you best.”

“Want?” he sneers. “Want is for children. If this were want, I would be rid of you by now. I would have forgotten you centuries ago,” he says, a bitter loathing in his voice. “This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”