More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Each home cozy on its own yet gaudy when compressed together, an assembly line of American perfection.
Maybe that’s what immortality is: remembering the tastes of your youth while feeding your children.
He wasn’t mean or rude; he just hardly existed.
People have short attention spans these days. But I went through it, cover to cover.
Veritas Vitæ Magistra. “Truth is the teacher of life,” she whispers.
People want to be heard, especially when they’ve been misheard, misquoted, and misunderstood. It’s why we relive old arguments in the shower until we’ve won.
New England was becoming crowded these days.
He was a man, dammit, a New England man, and a fisherman too. He wasn’t supposed to shriek and scamper off to the far side of the boat.
Not beauty or lust but something comforting and safe. A glowing stove on a cold, snowy night.
And yeah, he had to admit, there was a certain beauty to her. An antique charm, dusty and dim yet stunning once cleaned and polished.
they’d built up a flirtatious banter, culminating in a series of hookups this summer and a relationship neither quite understood.
Perhaps therapy made men uncomfortable. So much else about women did.
The crescent scar running from her temple, down through her eyebrow, and circling back across her cheek was a constant reminder: she had been broken and was still putting the pieces back together.
Was there some sort of happy medium? One where they could hook up without the seesaw of attraction and repulsion? A friend with benefits, like that Alanis Morissette line?
Now here he stood, yesterday’s specter, his tired face a reflection of her own.
His smile matched her own, a thing of shared history.
“I let you drift away. That wasn’t right.” “You ‘let me drift away’?” Her toes curled and her jaw tightened. “What, like we were a pair of boats tied together? Jesus, only you could make it sound mutual.”
Dammit, why couldn’t she just be mad and move on? Why was this bottled anger turning into pity and toxic nostalgia?
The armor was softening. Maybe it was the sugar. Or maybe it was the fact that she had been trying to hurt him, and yet all she was doing was showing him how much she still hurt.
Yes, she knew she was pretty—or rather, she was cute and petite—and guys always seemed compelled to help her.
Before her accident, reading was one of her joys. After, it had become a chore, her focus fleeting, her interest scattered. She often found herself rereading entire chapters with little memory of what happened.
There was a certain deterministic appeal to horoscopes, Tom suspected. A Get Out of Jail Free card for the spiritually inclined.
“For a stoner, you have the memory of the FBI.”
It was different for guys. Sure, they had reputations, but they could shed them like old clothes over the summer and become something new. Women had labels that stuck.
Friends relegated to another life, faces blurring with each passing season. She was starting to understand the truth of it all: most friends didn’t grow older and closer. They simply grew apart.
That’s the power of memory, he supposes. Every one is unique, carved into neurons and strengthened through emotions and senses. It’s why so many adults never move past the music of their youth.
like to think we’re the sum total of all those who helped us or hurt us or simply shared our life for a moment.
Perhaps some high school slight they’d never resolved. Small towns were like that; rivalries festered.
It wasn’t a superpower or anything unnatural like some people made it out to be. It was just empathy and imagination, things often dismissed by other cops.
“Book of Revelations, hello.” She tapped her fingers on the counter. “The name of the fallen star is Wormwood.”
A bit melodramatic, wasn’t it? But then again, she remembered her high school days: every kiss was desperate and passionate, each moment the most meaningful ever. Life’s volume, turned up to the max. It was exhausting and she was glad those years were behind her.
It didn’t make much sense, but love never did.
consumed by the void that divided her life into before and after.
It came easy to her lips; the truth always did.
That debt of silence had hung too heavy, accumulating with each passing month.
What would they see in her now? A broken woman, a shell of the Megan they once knew?
Why was it so hard to talk to someone she’d known for her most formative years? Because for some, those years were a deep well of torment. For some, those years were best forgotten.
They burst out laughing, fear and miles dissolving, just two friends connected by time and memory.
In her head, she had rehearsed endless barbs that would cut him to the bone. She carried them like arrows. Now she saw them for what they were, petty comments forged in the fires of disappointment and sharpened by time.
“You implied it with your eyes. I think the term you used was ‘delusional.’” “I was frustrated and I have a limited vocabulary. You’re the English major. Grab a thesaurus, swap it out for something else.”
According to the records, there’d been too much alcohol in her blood for the doctors to stitch her up immediately. She fell into a coma for seventy-two hours.
You know what a zero-sum game is? It’s where one side only wins if the other loses. Everything was a zero-sum game to her.”
Some of the memories were now settling into place, a satisfying click like a bone in a socket. Others were still scattered, rogue pieces on some puzzle she wasn’t sure would ever be solved.
She told herself she just needed inspiration, a change of location, something always just out of grasp. She told herself raw talent would make up for consistent work.
Two adults with all the subtlety of kids.
“The deepest bonds are elemental, built upon the friction of opposition. Water and fire, night and day, life and death. The transition from adolescence to adulthood lives at this nexus. It’s why you remember the chapped lips of your first kiss and the songs of the summer. Why true awe is your first trip to Fenway Park, with your friends. And why nothing ever tastes as delicious as that hotdog they bought you.”
“You get older, you start to forget what it’s like being young. Everything so raw and uncomfortable.”
It was okay, she told herself. In life, friends came and went. But it didn’t fill the hole they left. Would she ever know anyone as deeply as those she grew into adulthood with?
Memories are not fact; they’re adjusted every time they’re re-encoded.
Yes, change can be scary as one gets older. I feel it too, that siren song of “Weren’t things just simpler back then?” Nostalgia serving up another cup of that addictive Dandelion Wine.
