Solitaire

by Alice Oseman

“I’m in love with you,” he says.

See... I knew this

One is to punch him in the face.

Valid

You’re someone else. Someone I don’t know,

You were in love with the idea of her

‘I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself.’

Jesus

you really did hate yourself.

She does

He let these stupid, imaginary feelings control his life, and he made bad things happen. Very bad things. Which caused other bad things to happen. This is the way the world works. This is why you never let your feelings control your behavior.

Emotions are humanity’s fatal disease. And we’re all dying.

The sadness is coming, like a storm.

“Yeah, I know. I feel really, really, really good.” “Then … shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

Um....…

She points at me with an accusatory finger and hisses, “I knew you wouldn’t go home!”

She never said she would…

she started to move on while I stayed exactly where I was.

Changing an environment doesn’t change a person.”

“Sadness is a natural human emotion, you giant dick.”

You know what, Evelyn? Maybe I want to be a special snowflake. Maybe, sometimes, I just want to express the emotions that I’m actually feeling instead of having to put on this happy, smiley facade that I put on every day just to come across to bitches like you as not boring.”

Ahhhh

“Er, no. It wasn’t love really. It was … I just thought I needed you … for some reason …” He shakes his head. “I actually think that Becky’s rather lovely.”

Seeeeeee

Not even because I’m losing and Solitaire is winning. Because Michael is in here.

Awwww

It’s not the school I’ve failed. It’s not even myself. It’s Michael. I’ve failed him. I failed to stop being sad.

Thats not how depression works

A thousand thoughts at once. Michael Holden is nine hundred of them. The rest are self-hatred.

I haven’t ever known what I wanted out of life. Until now. I sort of want to be dead.

Oh… 😀

Sometimes paradise isn’t what people think it should be.

Sometimes people hate themselves.

“DON’T!” Don’t, he says.

Is she going to jump?!?!?

It’s like when you’re four years old and you tell your parents that you’re going to run away. And they say: “Okay, go right ahead.”

Lol

“Do you want to kill yourself?” he asks, and the question sounds unreal because you never hear anyone ever asking that question in real life.

“We all need saving really.”

He needed me as much as I needed him, because he was angry, and he has always been angry.

Just because someone smiles doesn’t mean that they’re happy.

No one is happy. What is there in the future?

“Some people aren’t meant for school,” says Michael. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t meant for life.”

“One person can change everything,” he says. “And you have changed everything for me.”

“You are my best friend,” he says.

“We’re all going to die. One day. So I want to get it right first time, you know? I don’t want to make any more mistakes. And I know that this is not a mistake.” He smiles. “You are not a mistake.”

I know that he doesn’t just hate himself for letting the school burn. He hates himself for a whole lot of other reasons too. But he shouldn’t hate himself. He can’t. He makes me believe that there are good people in this world.

When I met Michael Holden, I knew, deep down, that he was the best person you could possibly hope to be—so perfect that he was unreal. And it made me sort of hate him. However, rather than slowly learning more and more good things about him, I have come across flaw after flaw after flaw. And you know what? That’s what makes me like him now. That’s why he is a real perfect person. Because he is a real person.

then we kiss.

Yessssssss

“I think I’ve loved you since I met you,” he says as we draw apart. “I just mistook it for curiosity.”

I cannot see the faces clearly, but each person is a whole person. A whole person with a whole life, who gets out of bed in the morning and goes to school and talks to friends and eats food and lives. They’re chanting our names and I don’t know most of them and most of them don’t know me I don’t even know why they’re here, but still … still …

“You really did accidentally start something beautiful.”

“You hate yourself. I hate myself. Common interests. We should get together.”

Thats an interesting pick up line

for once I don’t think that any of them are conceited, or faking it. They’re all just being people.

I can’t say that I feel happy. I’m not even sure if I would know if I was. But all those people down there look so funny and it makes me want to laugh and cry and dance and sing and not take a flying, dramatic, spectacular leap off this building. Really. It’s funny because it’s true.

Because she stopped Quiff theoretically shooting him, or whatever.

Theoretically 😃😃

He says many things—things that you would expect people to say in this sort of situation, about love and understanding, and support, and being there, things that are supposedly not said enough, things that usually do not need to be said.

“I noticed,” he says. “But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.” I have begun to cry. “I love you anyway,”

❤️❤️❤️

“He said that this is probably because he read The Catcher in the Rye too many times when he was our age, and that it got absorbed into his gene pool.”

Lol

“This is supposed to be the best time of our lives,” he says. Becky snorts into Lucas’s shoulder. “If this is the best time of my life, I might as well end it immediately.”

Lol