Unlikely Animals

by Annie Hartnett

Back then, Emma loved Crystal with an intensity of a teenage best friendship, stronger even than a romance, and just as obsessive.

People talk a lot about first loves, or the love of your life, but people don’t say as much about the friend of your life.

Anticipatory grief, it’s called, when you’re sad about something that hasn’t happened yet. Oh man, we thought at Maple Street, how we missed the excruciating pain of being alive.

It’s easy to figure out how you feel about something when you think you’re about to lose it.

“Dad, the realization that you’re going to die is not an excuse for an affair.” “Oh, my dear daughter. You’ll find dying is an excuse for everything.”