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And as any mixed-race person will tell you—to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.
The awareness gave him pause: perhaps a funny-looking mixed-race kid could exist at the center of the world, not just on its periphery.
It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.
A glimmer of a notion of a nothing of a whisper of a figment of an idea.
Why was it acceptable for apparently well-meaning people to see the world in such a general way?
The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets.
The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.
There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”
To an outsider, it didn’t obviously signify the death of his partner. It was just a hole.
What touched him the most was the sound of Sadie’s voice, untouched and clarion, speaking to him through a game, across time and space.
What person was a person without language? Tastes? Preferences? Experiences?
The fact that Dong Hyun had not died a video game death meant that Sam had been able to spend time with him before the end. The length of time it had taken Dong Hyun to die also meant he had said everything he wanted to say to Sam, his cousins, and his grandmother. Was this trade worth his suffering? Sam didn’t know.
Why wouldn’t you tell someone you loved them? Once you loved someone, you repeated it until they were tired of hearing it. You said it until it ceased to have meaning. Why not? Of course, you goddamn did.
Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.
You couldn’t be old and still be wrong about as many things as she’d been wrong about, and it was a kind of immaturity to call yourself old before you were.
