Maggie Stiefvater

“Sleep deprivation made his life an imaginary thing, his days a ribbon floating aimlessly in water." - Whelk”

“If we go that way, it seems less like we’ll be shot for trespassing. We can’t be low profile because of your shirt.”“Aquamarine is a wonderful color, and I won’t be made to feel bad for wearing it,” Gansey said. But his voice was a bit thin, and he glanced back at the church again. Just then he looked younger than she’d ever seen him, his eyes narrowed, hair messed up, features unstudied. Young and, strangely enough, afraid.Blue thought: I can’t tell him. I can never tell him. I have to just try to stop it from happening.Then Gansey, suddenly charming again, flipped a hand in the direct of her purple tunic dress. “Lead the way, Eggplant.”She found a stick to poke at the ground for snakes before they set off through the grass. The wind smelled like rain, and the ground rumbled with thunder, but the weather held. The machine in Gansey’s hands blinked red constantly, only flickering to orange when they stepped too far away from the invisible line.“Thanks for coming, Jane,” Gansey said.Blue shot him a dirty look. “You’re welcome, Dick.”He looked pained. “Please don’t.”

“So I take it you and Gansey get along, then?” Maura’s expression was annoyingly knowing.“Mom.”“Orla told me about his muscle car,” Maura continued. Her voice was still angry and artificially bright. The fact that Blue was well aware that she’d earned it made the sting of it even worse. “You aren’t planning on kissing him, are you?”“Mom, that will never happen,” Blue assured her. “You did meet him, didn’t you?”“I wasn’t sure if driving an old, loud Camaro was the male equivalent of shredding your T-shirts and gluing cardboard trees to your bedroom walls.”“Trust me,” Blue said. “Gansey and I are nothing like each other. And they aren’t cardboard. They’re repurposed canvas.”“The environment breathes a sigh of relief.” Maura attempted another sip of her drink; wrinkling her nose, she shot a glare at Persephone. Persephone looked martyred. After a pause, Maura noted, in a slightly softer voice, “I’m not entirely happy about you’re getting in a car without air bags.”“Our car doesn’t have air bags,” Blue pointed out.Maura picked a long strand of Persephone’s hair from the rim of her glass. “Yes, but you always take your bike.”Blue stood up. She suspected that the green fuzz of the sofa was now adhered to the back of her leggings. “Can I go now? Am I in trouble?”“You are in trouble. I told you to stay away from him and you didn’t,” Maura said. “I just haven’t decided what to do about it yet. My feelings are hurt. I’ve consulted with several people who tell me that I’m within my rights to feel hurt. Do teenagers still get grounded? Did that only happen in the eighties?”“I’ll be very angry if you ground me,” Blue said, still wobbly from her mother’s unfamiliar displeasure. “I’ll probably rebel and climb out my window with a bedsheet rope.”Her mother rubbed a hand over her face. Her anger had completely burned itself out. “You’re well into it, aren’t you? That didn’t take long.”“If you don’t tell me not to see them, I don’t have to disobey you,” Blue suggested.“This is what you get, Maura, for using your DNA to make a baby,” Calla said.Maura sighed. “Blue, I know you’re not an idiot. It’s just, sometimes smart people do dumb things.”Calla growled, “Don’t be one of them.”“Persephone?” asked Maura.In her small voice, Persephone said, “I have nothing left to add.” After a moment of consideration, she added, however, “If you are going to punch someone, don’t put your thumb inside your fist. It would be a shame to break it.”“Okay,” Blue said hurriedly. “I’m out.”“You could at least say sorry,” Maura said. “Pretend like I have some power over you.”

“While they waited, Ronan decided to finally take up the task of teaching Adam how to drive a stick shift. For several minutes, it seemed to be going well, as the BMW had an easy clutch, Ronan was brief and to the point with his instruction, and Adam was a quick study with no ego to get in the way.From a safe vantage point beside the building, Gansey and Noah huddled and watched as Adam began to make ever quicker circles around the parking lot. Every so often their hoots were audible through the open windows of the BMW.Then—it had to happen eventually—Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear.Ronan finished with, “For the love of . . . Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.”Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.”There was a flash of fangs from the passenger seat, but before Ronan truly had time to strike, they both heard Gansey call warmly, “Jane! I thought you’d never show up. Ronan is tutoring Adam in the ways of manual transmissions.”Blue, her hair pulled every which way by the wind, stuck her head in the driver’s side window. The scent of wildflowers accompanied her presence. As Adam catalogued the scent in the mental file of things that made Blue attractive, she said brightly, “Looks like it’s going well. Is that what that smell is?”Without replying, Ronan climbed out of the car and slammed the door.Noah appeared beside Blue. He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever. Noah had decided almost immediately that he would do anything for Blue, a fact that would’ve needled Adam if it had been anyone other than Noah.Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair, something Adam would have also liked to do, but felt would mean something far different coming from him.”

“Haven’t you heard of being hung, drawn, and quartered?”Blue asked, “Is it as painful as conversations with Ronan?”Gansey cast a glance over to Ronan, who was a small, indistinct form by the trees. Adam audibly swallowed a laugh.“Depends on if Ronan is sober,” Gansey answered.Adam asked, “What is he doing, anyway?”“Peeing.”“Trust Lynch to deface a place like this five minutes after getting here.”“Deface? Marking his territory.”“He must own more of Virginia than your father, then.”“I don’t think he’s ever used an indoor toilet, now that I consider it.”

“What’s going on with your face, by the way?”Gansey rubbed his chin, rueful. His skin felt reluctantly stubbled. He knew he was being diverted, but he allowed it. “Is it growing?”“Dude, you aren’t really going to do that beard thing, are you? I thought you were joking. You know that stopped being cool in the fourteen century or whenever it was that Paul Bunyan lived.” Ronan looked over his shoulder at him. He was sporting the five o’clock shadow that he was capable of growing at any time of the day. “Just stop. You look mangy.”“It’s irrelevant. It’s not growing. I’m doomed to be a man-child.”“If you keep saying things like ‘man-child,’ we’re done,” Ronan said. “Hey, man. Don’t let it get you down. Once your balls drop, that beard’ll come in great.”

“The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn’t certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved.Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. “Make it stop,” he said.Ronan’s room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he’d seen a scythe.The ragged sound cut through the apartment again.“What fresh hell is this?” Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air.Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted back, beak agape.“I thought we were clear on what a closed door meant,” Ronan said. He held a pair of tweezers in one hand.“I thought we were clear that night was for sleeping.”Ronan shrugged. “Perhaps for you.”“Not tonight. Your pterodactyl woke me. Why is it making that sound?”In response, Ronan dipped the tweezers into a plastic baggy on the blanket in front of him. Gansey wasn’t certain he wanted to know what the gray substance was in the tweezers’ grasp. As soon as the raven heard the rustle of the bag, it made the ghastly sound again—a rasping squeal that became a gurgle as it slurped down the offering. At once, it inspired both Gansey’s compassion and his gag reflex.“Well, this is not going to do,” he said. “You’re going to have to make it stop.”“She has to be fed,” Ronan replied. The ravel gargled down another bite. This time it sounded a lot like vacuuming potato salad. “It’s only every two hours for the first six weeks.”“Can’t you keep her downstairs?”In reply, Ronan half-lifted the little bird toward him. “You tell me.”

“There were three boys in the doorway, backlit by the evening sun as Neeve had been so many weeks ago. Three sets of shoulders: one square, one built, one wiry.“Sorry that I’m late,” said the boy in front, with the square shoulders. The scent of mint rolled in with him, just as it had in the churchyard. “Will it be a problem?”Blue knew that voice.She reached for the railing of the stairs to keep her balance as President Cell Phone stepped into the hallway.Oh no. Not him. All this time she’d been wondering how Gansey might die and it turned out she was going to strangle him.”

“Persephone said, “What an unpleasant young man.”Calla let the curtains drift shut. She remarked, “I got his license plate number.”“I hope he never finds what he’s looking for,” Maura said.Retrieving her two cards from the table, Persephone said, a little regretfully, “He’s trying awfully hard. I rather think he’ll find something.”Maura whirled toward Blue. “Blue, if you ever see that man again, you just walk the other way.”“No,” Calla corrected. “Kick him in the nuts. Then run the other way.”

“You seem to have an extremely large bag today, Mr. Lynch,” Whelk said.“You know what they say about men with large bags,” Ronan replied. "Ostendes tuum et ostendam meus?”"Gansey had no idea what Ronan had just said, but he was certain from Ronan’s smirk that it wasn’t entirely polite.Whelk’s expression confirmed Gansey’s suspicion, but he merely rapped on Ronan’s desk with his knuckles and moved off.“Being a shit in Latin isn’t the way to an A,” Gansey said.Ronan’s smile was golden. “It was last year.”

“Blue had two rules: stay away from boys, because they’re trouble, and stay away from raven boys, because they were bastards.”

“She said, “Do you see how I’m wearing this apron? It means I’m working. For a living.”The unconcerned expression didn’t flag. He said, “I’ll take care of it.”She echoed, “Take care of it?”“Yeah. How much do you make in an hour? I’ll take care of it. And I’ll talk to your manager.”For a moment, Blue was actually lost for words. She had never believed people who claimed to be speechless, but she was. She opened her mouth, and at first, all that came out was air. Then something like the beginning of a laugh. Then finally, she managed to sputter, “I am not a prostitute.”The Aglionby boy appeared puzzled for a long moment, and then realization dawned. “Oh, that was not how I meant it. That is not what I said.”“That is what you said! You think you can just pay me to talk to your friend? Clearly you pay most of your female companions by the hour and don’t know how it works with the real world, but . . . but . . .” Blue remembered that she was working to a point, but now what that point was. Indignation had eliminated all higher functions and all that remained was the desire to slap him. The boy opened his mouth to protest, and her thought came back to her all in a rush. “Most girls, when they’re interested in a guy, will sit with them for free.”To his credit, the Aglionby boy didn’t speak right away. Instead, he thought for a moment and then he said, without heat, “You said you were working for living. I thought it’d be rude to not take that into account. I’m sorry you’re insulted. I see where you’re coming from, but I feel it’s a little unair that you’re not doing the same for me.”“I feel you’re being condescending,” Blue said.In the background, she caught a glimpse of Soldier Boy making a plane of his hand. It was crashing and weaving toward the table surface while Smudgy Boy gulped laughter down. The elegant boy held his palm over his face in exaggerated horror, fingers spread just enough that she could see him wince.“Dear God,” remarked Cell Phone boy. “I don’t know what else to say.”“Sorry,” she recommended.“I said that already.”Blue considered. “Then ‘bye.’”He made a little gesture at his chest that she thought was supposed to mean he was curtsying or bowing or something sarcastically gentleman-like.”

“Ronan and Declan Lynch were undeniably brothers, with the same dark brown hair and sharp nose, but Declan was solid where Ronan was brittle. Declan’s wide jaw and smile said Vote for me while Ronan’s buzzed head and thin mouth warned that this species was dangerous.”

“The only thing is, the more I see him and Corr together, the more I think of how unbearable it would be for Sean to lose him. But we can't both win.”

“Once upon a time, this moment - this last light of the evening the day before the race - was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life.”

“I feel a strange, fierce squeeze in my heart when I see him, like pride, although there's nothing about Sean that I can take credit for.”

“Sean, as always, gets by on one word while everyone else needs five or six.”

“My father said once that if I didn't have my mother's ginger hair, I wouldn't blush or curse as easily. Which I though was unfair. I hardly ever curse or blush, even though I've had plenty of days that required both.”

“We both look mournfully in the window as we pass, though I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't. Nothing says orphans like two kids breaking their necks looking at trays of November cakes and platters of shaped cookies and lovely soft loaves of bread still steaming the window they're next to.”

“When Dove moves up from a canter to a gallop, sometimes the only way I can tell the difference is because her hooves pound a four-time rhythm instead of a three. But when Corr moves into a gallop, it's as if it's a gait that's just been invented, something so much faster than all the others that it should be called something else...Each stride feels like it takes us a mile. We'll run out of island before he runs out of speed. We're giants, on his back.”

“Something tells me my spit wouldn't mean as much to Corr as yours would." There's a long Pause before Sean speaks. He says, "Maybe not yet." Yet! I don't think I've ever heard such a fine word before.”

“Sean does that slow sweep of his eyes that he does, the one that goes from my head to my toes and back again and makes me feel that he's scanning the depths of my soul and teasing out my motivations and sins. It's worse than confession with Father Mooneyham.”

“I'd never realized how changeless this changeable island was until it turned into something different than I'd ever known.”

“This Skarmouth is raw and hungry, striving and unknowable. Everything the races make me feel on the inside is bleeding up through the seams of the street tonight.”

“Tourists, a lot of them, wearing unfamiliar faces. There is something subtly different about them, like they're a different species...They're related to us like Dove is related to the water horses.”

“Finn never looks more excited - he just gets faster. Finns are generally slow-moving creatures.”

“How's that brother of yours?" Gratton asks me. "Which one?" "The heroic one with the cart." I sigh so deeply that the collie licks my face to cure me. "Oh, Finn.”

“I hear one of my mares scream, and I turn long enough to flip open my bag and throw a handful of salt in her direction. She jerks her head up as some of it sprinkles her face; she's offended but not hurt...I turn back to the sea, and the wind throws sand in my face, hard enough to offend but not to hurt. I smile a thin smile at the irony and turn up my collar.”

“There is nothing special about the mare, nothing at all. A fine enough head, good enough bone. As a pony, she is a beauty. As a capall uisce, she is nothing. The girl too, is nothing special - slight, with a ginger ponytail. She looks less afraid than her mare, but she's in more danger.”

“Puffin the cat follows us for a while, with Finn shooing at her, which only makes her longing to join us more intense.”

“At the moment, he can tell he's being watched by a stranger, however, so he picks his feet up and tosses his mane just a little more than usual. I allow him his show. There are worse flaws than vanity in a horse.”

“She is my mare and my best friend, and I keep waiting for something bad to happen to her, because I love her too much.”

“He was full of the restless, dissatisfied energy that always seemed to move into his heart after he visited home these days. It had something to do with the knowledge that his parents’ house wasn’t truly home anymore — if it had ever been — and something to do with the realization that they hadn’t changed; he had.”

“Fro and to in my dreams to youTo the haunting tune of the harpFor the price I paid when you died that dayI paid that day with my heartFro and to in my dreams to youWith the breaking of my heartNe'er more again will I sing this songNe'er more will I hear the harp.”

“The sun shines through the windowAnd the sun shines through your hairIt seems like you're beside meBut I know that you're not there.You would sit beside this windowRun your fingers through my hairYou were always there beside meBut I know that you're not thereOh, to be by your side once againOh, to hold your hand in mine againOh, to be by your side once againOh, to hold your hand in mine again-”

“We all, one day, realize that we’re not going to be kids forever and we’re going to grow up.”

“Gansey turned the key. The engine turned over once, paused for the briefest of moments - and then roared to deafening life. The Camaro lived to fight another day. The radio was even working, playing the Stevie Nicks song that always sounded to Gansey like it was about a one-winged dove.”

“Because that's life. Life's pain. You just have to get over as much of it as you can.”

“The throw truck driver and car-lot owner stood there, peering at us. Hier voice came through, muffled by the glass. ''You find what you're looking for?'' Grace reached across and rolled down the window. She was talking to him but looking at me, gaze intense, when she said, ''Absolutely.”

“In his head, his mother said, 'People shout when they don’t have the vocabulary to whisper'.”

“We have to be back in three hours," Ronan said. "I just fed Chainsaw but she'll need it again.""This," Gansey replied "is precisely why I didn't want to have a baby with you.”

“I’d always thought I was above being fascinated by anyone but myself.”

“I think that’s a mercy of this island, actually, that it won’t give us our terrible memories for long, but let us keep the good ones for as long as we want them.”

“Adam wasn't certain what came first with Blue--her treating the boys as friends, or them all becoming friends. It seemed to Adam that this circular way to build relationships required a healthy amount of self-confidence to undertake. And it was a strange sort of magic that it felt like she'd always been hunting for Glendower with them.”

“Ronan kept staring at Whelk. He was good at staring. There was something about his stare that took something from the other person.”

“More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it.”

“Her eyes on my eyes. I was tearing apart, inside and outside. Her life.My life.”

“Of all the things I found puzzling about Sam, this one was always the most puzzling: his sudden, self-deprecating mood swings... Was this what it meant to be creative?”

“Once upon a time… there was a boy named Cole St. Clair, and he could do anything. And the weight of that possibility was so unbearable that he crushed himself before it had a chance to.”

“I say good-bye good-bye good-byeI shout it out so loud‘Cause the next time that I find my voice I might not remember how.”