I Have Some Questions For You

by Rebecca Makkai

two weeks, I didn’t want to just sit around. The need to keep busy is both a symptom of high-functioning anxiety and the key to my success.

I also couldn’t pass a pay phone without flipping the receiver upside down. This was incredibly witty and rebellious; you’ll have to believe me.

What bothers me now is those boys internalizing girls as audience, there only to act as mirrors, to make their accomplishments realer.)

Mr. Levin said, “You know, I always knew you were going to be okay.” I felt like crying—out of bitterness? out of tenderness?—because if that was true, he was the only one who’d ever thought so. I certainly hadn’t thought it myself. He said, “You were always going to be just fine.”

It became as real to us as those lightning bugs, their mating dance at the tree line, our laughter, Bendt’s good-humored relief, our feet hitting the earth as we raced to catch them for him,

bringing him miracles in our cupped hands.

I’d forgotten about the light at Granby. It was different there, older, passing through centuries before it reached you. Outside in winter, it came down in needles; inside, it fell like soup.