Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

“There are people like you and like me. We have bad things happen to us, and we survive them. We are sturdy. But with people like your friend, you must be exceptionally gentle, or they may break.”

She realized what a gate was: it was an indication that you had left one space and were entering another. She walked through another gate. It occurred to Sadie: She had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn’t.)

I knew your mother so well I could play her part. The same with my own mother and my grandmother and my childhood best friend, Euna, who drowned in the lake by her cousin’s house. There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”