Sarah Dessen

“I looked down again at the sign in my hand - ENJOY THE RIDE! - and it seemed, suddenly, to be just that. A sign.”

“I'd learn that it's not just where you go, but how you choose to get there. So I pulled that sign off the green bike - ENJOY YOUR RIDE! - and went inside to take the first step toward doing just that.”

“I'd come here planning to leave as soon as I could. It was a pit stop, not a destination. I had my whole life mapped out.""So what happened?""I guess that map didn't turn out to be mine after all,”

“Get back on that bike.”

“You didn't fail. You just opted out. There's a difference.”

“It's harder that in looks," I told him when I finally got back in the car."Most things are,”

“You ready to play?" Dave asked, bouncing it."I don't know," I said. "Are you going to cheat?""It's street ball!" He said checking it to me. "Show me that love."So chessy, i thought. But as i felt it, solid against my hands, i did feel something. I wasn't sure it was love. Maybe what remained of it, though, whatever that might be. "All right," I said. "Let's play.”

“You need a third option," he said."Yeah. I guess i do."He nodded, absorbing this. "Well," he said,"For what it's worth, it's been my experience that they don't appear at first. You kind of have to look a little more closely.""And when does that happen?" He shugged. "When you're ready to see them, I guess.”

“It was so quiet, I could hear my own breathing, loud in my ears. Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.”

“You didn't have to take a punch for me, you know,' he said. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter.''You're a freak is what you are,' I said.He stuck out his hand. 'Come on, slugger. Walk with me. You know you want to.'And the thing was, despite everything I knew-that it was a mistake, that he was different from the others-I did. How he knew that, I had no idea. But I got up and did it anyway.”

“So much had happened that morning. Yet it was this image, this moment, that i kept going back to hours later, after we'd made it safely to the walkway and gone our separate ways to classes. How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if i fell, at least i wouldn't do it alone.”

“Sorry!' Dave's friend yelled when he saw me. 'That was my-' But i wasn't listening as,instead,i took every bit of the anger and stress of the last few minutes and days put it behind the ball, throwing it overhead at the basket as hard as i could. It went flying, hitting the backboard and banging through the netless hoop at full speed before shooting back out and nailing Dave Wade squarely on the forehead. And just like that, he was down.”

“You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.”

“I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.”

“The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad's iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came on, the notes familiar. I went into the living room, hitting the switch there, then down the hallway to my room, where I did the same. It was amazing what a little noise and brightness could do to a house and a life, how much the smallest bit of each could change everything. After all these years of just passing through, I was beginning to finally feel at home.”

“I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.”

“Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's like, the highest level of friendship.”

“When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.”

“Let me guess,” Eli said, his voice that low, even timbre, as always. “Drinking from kegs also falls under outdoor activity.”I just looked at him, standing there in jeans and the same blue hoodie he’d had on the first time I met him. Maybe it was the embarrassment, which had been bad enough before I had an audience, but I was instantly annoyed. I said, “Are we outside?”He glanced round, as if needing to confirm this. “Nope.”“Then no.” I turned my attention back to the keg.”

“How fast were you?" Wes asked me. I said, "Not that fast." "You mean you couldn't... fly?" he said, smiling at me.”

“I want the white one”

“I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.”

“Because maybe, the best of times were yet to come. You never knew.”

“Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together?" I asked him.He looked at me and then said, "You're here, aren't you?”

“But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.”

“You're wrong," I told her. "I lost that faith a long time ago."She looked at me as I said this, an expression of quiet understanding on her face. "Maybe you didn't, though," she said softly. "Lose it, I mean.""Lissa.""No, just hear me out." She looked out at the road for a second, then back at me. "Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It's been there. But you just haven't been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced... that means it's still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.”

“You can't act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.”

“You just had to know where to look.”

“Sometimes. It was a good escape. Until, you know, it wasn‟t.”

“Nicely put,” I said. “And all in less than two minutes.”“Conciseness is underrated,” she said easily.”

“There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.”

“Sure, there was no guarantee any of these things would actually happen as he envisioned. But maybe that wasn‟t the point.It was the planning that counted, whether it ever came to fruition or not.”

“I just stood there, looking at her. My head was spinning, my mouth dry, and all I could think about was that I wanted to go someplace safe, someplace I could be alone and okay, and that this was impossible. My old life had changed and my new one was still in progress, altering by the second. There was nothing, nothing to depend on. And why was I surprised?”

“but accepting help doesn‟t have to mean giving up control.”

“But it was important to simply be sought, even if you didn‟t ever want to be found.”

“Was it really this easy, once you escaped, to just not care?”

“There were so many times during those years, though, as we moved from one house to another, that I would find myself thinking about my sister. Usually it was late at night, when I couldn‟t sleep, and I‟d try to picture her in her dorm room forty-odd miles and a world away. I wondered if she was happy, what it was like out there. And if maybe, just maybe, she ever thought of me.”

“Later, though, I wished I had spoken up, or at least tried to explain that once I knew Cora better than anyone. But that was a long time ago, back when she wasn‟t trying to save the whole world. Only me.”

“During the long stretches of quiet two-lane highway, with the sunsetting in the distance, it wassomehow easier to say things aloud, and regardless of what was said, we justkept moving toward thathorizon.”

“For a second none of us said anything, and I wondered if, in the end, this ishow all disputes are settled,with a shared silence as things become equal. You take something from me, Itake something from you.We all want balance, one way or another.”

“When he first put his arms around me, it was tentative, like maybe he expectedI'd pull away. When Ididn't, he moved in closer, his hands smoothing over my shoulders, and in mymind I saw myselfretreating a million times when people tried to do this same thing: my sister ormy mother, pulling backand into myself, tucking everything out of sight, where only I knew where tofind it. This time, though, Igave in. I let Wes pull me against him, pressing my head against his chest,where I could feel his heartbeating, steady and true.”

“Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing,loved to sit on the back deckof the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at atime, staring at the ocean. Shenever had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon,but it kept her attention,her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved aboutbeing out there, theworld narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in andout.”

“There was no way to take the story back, folding it neatly into the place I'd keptit all this time. No matterwhat else happened, from here on out, I would always remember Wes, becausewith this telling, he'd become part of that story, of my story, too.”

“No," I snapped. "I mean, no. I'm answering. I'm just collecting my response."Another few seconds passed.Is there a time limit for this?" he asked. I shot him a look. "Just wondering.”

“You're a rule person," he said."My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary.""She cheated at this game?""She cheated ateverything ," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she alwaysinsisted on being banker,then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estatetransaction. I was, like, ten oreleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't dothat."He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling,remembering."During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.Always . But then she'dswear up and down shehadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied.Blatantly.”

“I knew Kristy was probably exactingthe revenge she thought Iwas due, while Delia moved right behind her, making apologies and smoothingrough edges. Monica wasmost likely following her own path, either oblivious or deeply emotionallyinvested, depending on whatyou believed, while Wes worked the perimeter, always keeping an eye oneverything. There was a wholeother world out there, the Talbots' world, where I didn't belong now, if I everhad. But it was okay not tofit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere. So I picked up my tray, carefulto keep it level, andpushed through the door to join my friends.”

“I knew that in the lastfew minutes everything hadchanged. I'd tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling outbits and pieces of who Iwas. But that only works for so long. Eventually, even the smallest fragmentscan't help but make awhole.”

“I realized all thosetimes I'd felt people stareat me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, ableto reflect back theexpression I thought only I wore, the feelings only I felt. Until now, thismoment, as our eyes met. If therewas a way to recognize something you'd never seen but still knew by heart, I feltit as I looked at hisface. Finally, someone understood.”

“He ate in your car? No shit?”

“It's nice to have options even if you can't take them.”