Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

William had the strange thought that he might never see his parents again—that they’d only ever had one child, and it wasn’t him.

I don’t think about those things, and it makes me sad to pretend to be something I’m not.

The people who called her easy, or a slut, were lazy thinkers.

he would be her husband, the structural beam of her future.

The dream was now in the air, at risk of the elements, beyond her grasp.

“It’s because you know that more is possible that you’ll always see the pointlessness in following a stupid rule or clocking in and out of a boring class. Most people can’t see that distinction, so they just do as they’re told. Of course, this makes them bored and irritated, but they think that’s the human condition. You and I are lucky enough to see that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

She hadn’t damaged him, and she wasn’t required to fix him.

time. She wasn’t sick, but she wasn’t well either.

She was no longer who she used to be, and she wasn’t yet whoever she was becoming.

“Stop thinking about who you were when you were living the wrong life,

Opportunity did not knock until I built the door.

When your love for a person is so profound that it’s part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.

“When an old person dies,” Kent said, “even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They’re like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.”