Snap Out of It

by Maddie Dawson

I wanted to raise her to be brave, to have adventures. I had been raised by absentee parents who seemed too busy for me and left me with my grandmother. Maybe that’s why I was in love with taking care of Louise. Some days I’d let her skip school just for the fun of it, and we’d hang out together.

He’s crying like a five-year-old who just found out his mom isn’t coming home again, and that ice cream has been discontinued worldwide.

I don’t have one jot of respect for romance, but passion is a language I understand.

I immediately think of the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie story. You let Mason Davis talk you into going to the diner, and then he wants you to go on his TV show. You go on his TV show, and then he wants to call you every day. You let him call you every day, and then he wants to come to your house. You let him come to your house, and God knows what happens next.

“More than anything, Billie, I wish you knew what love can be. You’re right that humans are imperfect. We’re selfish. We’re misguided. We make mistakes, but, honey, we’re also capable of such deep connections with each other, and sometimes we recognize in another person something that’s so moving and divine and otherworldly that we know we can’t live without having that in our lives. And it can happen at any time in life. It’s one of our best human powers, to love, and then pick ourselves up after a loss and love again and again.”

I actually call him up, which my mother would have said was a crime against nature, a woman calling a man on the telephone. I still hear her voice in my head whenever I do this.