Katja Millay

“Where did you go?' His voice drops just slightly and loses even the suggestion of a smile.He's watching me like he's not sure he's allowed to ask question, and he's not even sure he wants the answer. I can almost see grandfather's word and josh's doubt about them swimming in his head. On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if the my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.I don't say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at his face before I gave him my last secret. And then I tell him.'Your garage.”

“It's been five weeks since she walked out of my door. I started counting the second the door closed. I wonder when I'll stop.”

“...my closet and I are on my own. My closet is of no use to me. It may actually be laughing at me. It's true, I hear it.”

“So, you actually cooked tonight?" He regards me skeptically. I snort. Because snorting is attractive.”

“Sugar has a very special, oversized place on my food pyramid.”

“The teacher, Mrs. Jennings...makes us sit in a circle. An elementary school, duck-duck-goose-style circle. This affords each of us the best possible vantage point for studying, and subsequently dissecting one another. Oh, and getting to know one another,of course. That too.”

“I took my schedule, my map, and my abject horror and made my way to class, reading it again and again as I went. Unfortunately it stayed the same every time.”

“It's probably a class for guidance counselors only - How to Emit Inappropriate Joy in the Face of Adolescent Horror. I'm fairly certain they don't make teachers take it, because they don't even bother to pretend.”

“Then, I'll find an empty restroom and check my hair and fix my lipstick, or as we cowards like to call it, hide.”

“I'm grateful to Margot. Not that I tell her this. Not that I tell her anything. I don't.”

“In memory of my father, because he said so”

“...I'm under a microscope where my every facial expression is being studied. It makes me want to scream, but I can't, so I just swallow it like dirt and blood.”

“Her smile fades. "I cant use any of it.""You can use some of it," I say, because I want the smile back and because its true. She can do more than she thinks she can. For some reason, she just wont try. "And I can be your other hand when you need it.”

“About last night, I told Drew to keep his hands off you.""Why would you do that?""Because everyone talks shit about you because of it. But its not my business, so I'm sorry.""And he agreed?""Not without persuasion.""What kind of methods do you have that would work on drew?""I lied. I told him you were mine."(...)"Just so you know, you didn't lie.”

“Thats the irony of Josh and me, and it shames me every time I think about it. He has no family. No one to love him. I'm surrounded by love and I dont want any of it. I piss all over what he woud thank God for. And if I needed more proof that I have no soul, then there it is.”

“Dying isn't so bad after you've done it once. . . ”

“If I could be alone, I would. Gratefully. I'd rather be alone than have to pretend I'm okay.”

“I feel like grabbing my crotch and checking to see if my balls are still there because I think they may be in her pocket and I need to get them back.”

“I imagine she came out of the birth canal holding a cupcake and a spatula.”

“Thank You. Life is short and TBR lists are long. I know time is precious and I thank you for spending yours with this book.”

“Pasé una tonta cantidad de tiempo el año pasado leyendo libros y mirando películas, y en todos ellos, cuando mueres y te resucitan, los poderes sobrenaturales son parte del trato. ¡Perdona que no ganaras el gran premio de la paz eterna, pero no te vas con las manos vacías!Puedes volver roto y confundido, pero al menos tienes algún premio cósmico de consuelo, como la habilidad de leer mentes o hablar con los muertos u oler mentiras. Algo así de genial. Yo ni siquiera puedo manipular los elementos. Claro que si fuera a tomar enserio los libros, también tendría que creer que todos los chicos adolescentes llaman a las chicas nena, porque al parecer eso expresa completo amor. Él era un imbécil hace un minuto, pero te arroja un nena y estás acabada. Completa perdida del autocontrol y la dignidad activada.Oooh, me dijo nena. Mis bragas están mojadas y lo amooooooo.”

“He turns back to the fountain so his eyes aren't on me anymore, but I think he's still watching. "I'd ask you, you know. If I was allowed. I'd ask you a thousand times until you'd tell me. But you won't let me ask.”

“Las cosas malas pasan todo el tiempo; no esperan hasta después de la cena”

“...but she's my tangent girl and I'll follow her if this is where she wants to go.”

“My mom said that it just happens sometimes when you get older. You get halfway through with your life and you realize you haven't done the things you wanted to do or become what you'd thought you'd become and it's disheartening”

“There really isn't a way to explain how a person you've seen every day of your life just isn't anymore. Someone just hit delete and she's gone.”

“I just wanted one person who would look at me and not want to see someone else.”“Who looks at you like that?” I lift my head up and lower my hands so I can see her face, and I can’t imagine anyone looking at this girl and wanting to see anything but her.“Everyone who loves me.”“Who is it they want to see?“A dead girl.”

“Everyone wants to fix me. Myparents want to fix me. My brother wantsto fix me. My therapists want to fix me.You’re supposed to be the person whodoesn’t want to fix me.”

“On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, with him.”

“Just so you know,” I inform him, “one day, I’m going to get tired of sharing your affection with that coffee table and I’m going to make you choose.” “Just so you know,” he mimics me, “I would chop that table up and use it for firewood before I would ever choose anything over you.”

“Just so you know,” he mimics me, “I would chop that table up and use it for firewood before I would ever choose anything over you.”

“He tears apart faces and puts them back together whole, like I would a piece of music. I could play it a hundred ways, imbue it with a different emotion every time and try to find the truth of it. He does that with faces, except he’s not putting the truth in, he’s drawing it out. He’s looking for the truth of me. I wonder if he’ll find it, and if he does, maybe he can show me where it is again.”

“If Edna St. Vincent Millay was right and childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies, then my childhood ended when I was fifteen.”

“For a minute I was convinced she must have handed me the wrong schedule, so I checked the top of the paper. No, that’s me. I wasn’t sure what the right reaction was in that situation. You know the one, where the universe decides to put its steel-toed boot up your ass yet again. Crying was out of the question and a screaming hissy-fit laced with maniacal laughter and profanity was, most definitely, off the table, which left me with my only other option‌—‌stunned silence.”

“Dying really isn’t so bad after you’ve done it once. And I have. I’m not afraid of death anymore. I’m afraid of everything else.”

“It's all my fault! Everything is my fault and no one knows it more than me. We're all in hell and I'm the one that put us here.”

“I'd sit in a circle and a bunch of people who'd been through as much shit as I had would look at me like I snuck into the club without paying the cover. And I'd feel like screaming and telling them that I had paid it the same as everyone else in the room, I just didn't feel like waving around my receipt.”

“At the age when most kids are trying to figure out who they are. I was busy trying to figure out why I was. I didn't belong in this world anymore. It's not that I wanted to be dead. I just felt like I should be. Which is why it's hard when everyone expects you to be grateful simply because you're not.”

“It’s about the dream of second chances,” he says finally. He hasn’t raised his eyes from the paper on his desk and I feel him looking at me without looking when he uses his grandfather’s words. “The narrator doesn’t respect the beauty of life and the world around her, so it crushes her into the ground and once she’s dead, she realizes everything she took for granted and didn’t see right in front of her while she was alive. She’s begging for another chance to live again so she can appreciate it this time.”“And does she get that chance?” she asks Josh while I desperately focus on the poster of literary terms on the wall and wait for absolution. When it comes, I barely hear it.“She does.”

“When I look at her now, I think, for just one second, that God doesn't hate me so much after all.”

“Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn't tell him I was coming back. He doesn't say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I'm here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have and no one interrupts the conversation.”

“I don't know how to say it - after all this time, I'm not even sure that I can - but I have to break her last rule, because if she knows nothing else, I need her to know this one thing. 'I love you, Sunshine,' I tell her, before I lose my nerve. 'And I don't give a shit whether you want me to or not.”

“Everything in me turns on and shuts down at the same time. I am weak and strong. I am terrified and brave. I am lost and found. I am here and gone. I’m afraid I’m going to stop breathing again.”

“Everything is hell now and I deserve it, but I can handle pain.”

“I can afford just about anything I’m willing to pay for.”

“It's like having a ghost in my garage. I feel like I'm being haunted. With all the dead people I've got in my corner, you'd think one of them would be the one hanging around.”

“I have a black-belt in self-pity. I was an expert in the field. Still am. It's a skill you never forget.”

“What did you call her?" she asks but I don't think it's her real question."Sunshine," I say, and she smiles like she believes it's perfect and she may be the only person other than me who would think so."What is she to you?" she whispers. The real question and I know the answer even if I don't know how to say it.Drew's muffled voice rises up from the floor before I can respond."Family," he says.And he's right.”

“I feel like I’m waiting here. Waiting for something that hasn’t happened yet. Something that isn’t yet. But that’s all I feel and nothing else. I don’t know if I even exist. And then someone flips a switch and the light is gone, the room is gone, the weightlessness is gone. I want to ask to wait, because I wasn’t finished yet, but I don’t have a chance. There is no gentle pulling. No coaxing. No choice. I’m wrenched out. Yanked, as if my head is being snapped back. I’m in the dark and everything is pain. There are too many sensations at once. Every nerve ending is on fire. Like the shock of being born. And then, there are flashes of everything. Color, voices, machines, harsh words. The pain doesn’t flash. The pain is constant, steady, never-ending. It’s the only thing I know. I don’t want to be awake anymore.”

“Plus, once he did the requisite double-take and recognized me, he’d probably beat the crap out of any guy who looked at me in all my Snow White meets Frederick’s of Hollywood glory.”