Before I Fall

by Lauren Oliver

When you’re young you just want to be older, and then later you wish you could go back to being a kid.

Here’s another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you’re dead, it’s the only thing that keeps you alive.

it strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day—you can think you know them—and then you find out you hardly know them at all.

I suppose that’s the secret, if you’re ever wishing for things to go back to the way they were. You just have to look up.

It amazes me how easy it is for things to change, how easy it is to start off down the same road you always take and wind up somewhere new. Just one false step, one pause, one detour, and you end up with new friends or a bad reputation or a boyfriend or a breakup. It’s never occurred to me before; I’ve never been able to see it. And it makes me feel, weirdly, like maybe all of these different possibilities exist at the same time, like each moment we live has a thousand other moments layered underneath it that look different.

The details that are my life’s special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced. So many things become beautiful when you really look.

I guess that’s what saying good-bye is always like—like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you’re in the air, there’s nothing you can do but let go.