The Chalk Man

by C.J. Tudor

I guess it was the first time I understood how things can change in an instant. All the stuff we take for granted can just be ripped away. Maybe that’s why I took it. To hold on to something. To keep it safe. That’s what I told myself anyway.

Or maybe that’s just my perception. Often, what comes with age is not wisdom but intolerance.

everyone has secrets, things they know they shouldn’t do but do anyway.

There are some things in life you can alter—your weight, your appearance, even your name—but there are others that wishing and trying and working hard can never make any difference to. Those things are the ones that shape us. Not the things we can change, but the ones we can’t.

A principled man is generally a man who has everything he wants, or absolutely nothing to lose.

“Chloe,” I say. But I am saved, quite literally, by the bell.

Just because someone does one terrible thing, should that overshadow all the good things they’ve done? Or are there some things so bad that no good act can redeem them?

What shapes us is not always our achievements but our omissions. Not lies; simply the truths we don’t tell.

“Karma. What you sow, you reap. You do bad things and they’ll come back eventually and bite you on the backside.”

“That’s the point, Eddie. The thing you have to understand is that being a good person isn’t about singing hymns, or praying to some mythical god. It isn’t about wearing a cross or going to church every Sunday. Being a good person is about how you treat others. A good person doesn’t need a religion, because they are content within themselves that they are doing the right thing.”

We think we want answers. But what we really want are the right answers. Human nature. We ask questions that we hope will give us the truth we want to hear. The problem is, you can’t choose your truths. Truth has a habit of simply being the truth. The only real choice you have is whether to believe it or not.

It’s true. But the two were irrevocably intertwined. Chicken and egg. Which came first. The chalk men or the killing?

BEING AN ADULT is only an illusion. When it comes down to it I’m not sure any of us ever really grow up.

Ed Adams—bringer of joy and happy news.

For who are we if not the sum of our experiences, the things that we gather and collect in life? Once you strip those away we become just a mass of flesh, bone and blood vessels.

Real friends are there, no matter what. Real friends are people you love and hate in equal measure but who are as much a part of you as yourself.

YOUR WORLD SHRINKS as you grow older.

No one ever found any answers at the bottom of a bottle. Not the point, of course. The point of reaching the bottom of the bottle is generally to forget the questions.

Remembering—perhaps that was the killer.

Holding on, I think. Letting go. Sometimes, they’re one and the same.