Instructions for Dancing

by Nicola Yoon

The book of love is long and boring No one can lift the damn thing It’s full of charts and facts and figures And instructions for dancing But I I love it when you read to me And you You can read me anything —The Magnetic Fields, “The Book of Love”

I grab more from my backpack and consider telling her the truth. That the books don’t feel like they belong to me anymore. That love stories are like fairy tales: you’re not meant to believe in them forever.

Given enough time, all love stories turn into heartbreak stories. Heartbreak = love + time.

It’s Sophie and Cassidy standing right there in the middle of the staircase. They’re kissing. And I see.

“People don’t come back, Evie. The time we get is the time we get.”

Happiness is tricky. Sometimes you have to fight for it. Sometimes, though—the best times—it sneaks up behind you, wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you close.

A wide-open field and a coffin being lowered into the ground. It’s snowing so lightly the flakes dissolve before they touch the ground. Maggie and Archibald lean into each other. “This isn’t right,” Archibald says to Maggie. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

I watch as Maggie and Archibald begin their lives together in the audition line a thousand times. I watch as they die together in bed a thousand more.

Their vision is the only one I’ve ever seen that doesn’t end in heartbreak.

It’s a funeral program. There’s a photograph of X’s face. The caption reads In loving memory: Xavier Darius Woods. The date on it is ten months from now.

All I want to do is smash things. I want to make it so no one and nothing can hurt me ever again. I want to get rid of every nice, kind, sweet, soft feeling inside myself until there’s nothing at all. No joy, but no pain either.

“What I want is for you to explain to me why people make promises to each other. Why bother to love people if they’re just going to die and leave you all alone? You believe in God. Tell me why He would make the world like this. Tell me why He’s so cruel.”

The problem with broken hearts isn’t that they kill you. It’s that they don’t.

“Because mothers take care of their children, not the other way around. I wipe your tears. You’re not supposed to wipe mine.”

Mom said just because a thing ends doesn’t make the thing any less real. Just because everything is different now doesn’t mean we didn’t love each other once. Maybe we will again.

I have a few seconds to decide. I can choose to see their future. I can choose to see how it ends, and maybe even when. But at the last second, I close my eyes. I close my eyes, and I pretend they have forever.