Game Changer

by Neal Shusterman

Dedication

This book is dedicated to victims of hate crimes, with full names and age. I respect Neal a lot.

That’s what we do, isn’t it? Build ourselves a comfy web of reality like busy little spiders, and cling to it so we can get through the worst of days.

The ground shifts, and the world changes, and we go tumbling.

“This country is filled with the well-intentioned ignorant,” Leo told me. “It’s a freaking plague, and you’re a carrier.”

“Your ignorance is like a layer of stupid-ass sunscreen I gotta scrape off just to expose you to the light,”

Cruelty must have come holding hands with racism.

The plague of ignorance, the stupid-ass sunscreen—all the ways Leo had tried to open my eyes—had never really worked. Because they only saw what they wanted to see. What was easy to see. What was convenient.

We are so limited. As a species. As individuals. Not only can’t we see the future, we can’t even see the present for what it is. We’re too clouded by the things we want and the things we fear. But worse than any other blindness is that we can’t see the consequences of our actions.

They say be careful what you wish for, but you know what? No matter how careful we are, it’s not enough. We should know by now that anything we desire, and anything we achieve, comes at a cost, and with consequences we didn’t care enough to consider.

What choices are being made, what things are being said by people in high places that might seem so unimportant now, but are laying the groundwork for truly horrible things tomorrow?

It made me wonder how many important causes were crushed not by opposition, but by lukewarm support.

Experiencing your lives is the most important thing you can do.”

Why the hell did the world have to be that way? Slapping labels on us, rather than allowing us to just be who we are?

the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of murders, beatings, and attacks that happen every day of every year in every country on this sorry planet, targeting people because they’re gay, or transgender, or queer in any way. But a lot of people don’t see those stories, because our news feeds send us things we’re more likely to click on.

But I knew the dead were still down there, their graves unmarked, their names unremembered.

Which proved that no matter what world you lived in, injustice was a shitcake of many layers.

The vanity mirror, they call it. Every bit of language is layered with subtle slights. As women, we’re expected to paint ourselves to meet some social norm, and yet the very mirror that we use accuses us of being vain.

And then, on top of it, to have your own boyfriend kindly and politely suggest that maybe all this pent-up anger is just because it’s your time of the month.

ONE BOY DID THIS WHEN I WAS IN JUNIOR HIGH AND I WAS FURIOUS

Was there ever a time in our history that we accepted each other as human beings? Was the line between “us” and “them” always a chasm we couldn’t bridge?

words fall short of expressing things you’ve come to know in your heart.