Young Mungo

by Douglas Stuart

But Jodie’s tic was pure magic. It pushed people away.

So many lives were happening only two miles away from his and they all seemed brighter than his own.

Mungo felt sad that their night was over. Soon they would be back on the scheme. He wished they could get Jodie and go eat vinegary chips by the sea together.

But as he waited for retaliation, it slowly dawned on him that no hurt was coming. Instead of rejecting him James had made more space for him.

THIS HAD ME IN TEARS😭😭😭

I want to live somewhere where people aren’t always leaving. I don’t mind being alone.

quotes about people leaving are always going to be highlighted by me LOL

It was good to put your weight on someone else, even if it was just for a short while.

He wished for a friend now.

She had asked for violence out of a gentle soul and it made her feel like she had trampled a patch of fresh snow.

Mungo knew he wanted to spend his life doing this, just kissing this one boy. There was no need to rush.

He had found someone he could say the cruellest things to and they would not leave.

Violence always preceded affection; Mungo didn’t know any other way.

Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. His loving wasn’t selflessness; he simply couldn’t help it. Mo-Maw needed so little and he produced too much, so that it all seemed a horrible waste. It was a harvest no one had seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one had tended. It should have withered years ago, like hers had, like Hamish’s had. Yet Mungo had all this love to give and it lay about him like ripened fruit and nobody bothered to gather it up.

He was Mo-Maw’s youngest son, but he was also her confidant, her lady’s maid, and errand boy. He was her one flattering mirror, and her teenage diary, her electric blanket, her doormat. He was her best pal, the dog she hardly walked, and her greatest romance. He was her cheer on a dreich morning, the only laughter in her audience.

dog metaphor…

Her brother was her mother’s minor moon, her warmest sun, and at the exact same time, a tiny satellite that she had forgotten about.

He would orbit her for an eternity, even as she, and then he, broke into bits.

THIS LINE GOD

“What ye want is an easy life. There’s nothin’ easy about love.”

this made me so sad

All he wanted was the long fingers to wrap around his ribcage and hold him still, stop him floating away, let him know somebody cared.

“If you do shag her, I would understand.” It was a gamble to say it, he could lose, but he needed to say it regardless. “But, like, I will also die.”

BDHFJDJDN mungo is so dramatic and also me

listened to your mixtape. I stand in the dark at my window and listen to it every night.

“Cheer up. I love you, Mungo Hamilton.” “Don’t.” Something in him could not stand to be loved. “How no? I can love you if I want.” “It’ll just make it harder for me. When everything gets spoiled.”

mungo😭😭😭😭

He had to go home. He could never go home again.

He repeated himself. “I can’t help it.” Jodie spun him to face her. She shook him hard. “God sake! You have to help it. You can’t be like that and expect to be happy about it.”

ohr… i cried.

They knew the inescapable shame of it, how isolated it made him feel,

but he was looking in the wing mirror, staring at his own reflection and wondering again what it was that people could identify in him.

Mungo wanted nothing more than to share his pain with them. To make them feel the slow terrifying hours he had felt. But Gallowgate was right, he could never share the hurt, because it would cloud their eyes and some part of them would wonder what he had done to deserve it.

Jodie reached her hand out to push his hair away and he stepped away from her. He could look at Jodie, but he wouldn’t let her touch him again. If Jodie, of all people, could not love him, all of him, perhaps he could not be loved.

It was already over for them. It would never be over for him.

He was watching, and he was waiting, and he was leaving all at the same time.

Mungo smiled something small and timid. James returned it, and they let their grins widen slowly, slowly, until Mungo knew what he was going to do, where he was going to go. The only place he would ever want to be.

OHHHH😭 THE ONLY PLACE HE WOULD EVER WANT TO BE😭😭😭