Home > Work > Places No One Knows
21 " I'm better at being sorry. "
― Brenna Yovanoff , Places No One Knows
22 " I start, because if I don't, then everything just stays the same. "
23 " I thought he made me a different person altogether, but maybe I was always holding those pieces inside me, waiting for a chance to use them. "
24 " The last time I was this close to him, it was a commotion of touching. His hands, picking apart the rigid panels of my exoskeleton. His mouth, finding mine with the certainty of a meteor. "
25 " She was so much better than normal life," I say. "She made me better."Autumn glances over and shakes her head. "Don't. That's not how it works. Nobody makes you be anything. You just are that, whether you like it or not."She doesn't sound angry, but like she's explaining the world."That, then," I say, looking at the empty baseball diamond. "That's what I meant. Just that when I was with her, I was allowed to be better. "
26 " Everything smells like mildew, and the grim commitment to filth that can only be cultivated by post-adolescent boys. "
27 " ...the bad thing was that Ollie started crying. It was this basic rule of middle school that if someone messed with you, you were supposed to just take it like a psychopath. Only Ollie wasn't one. "
28 " Girl cut from marble needs no one, when it should have said, I have been so lonely for so long that I have almost stopped breathing. "
29 " Even in that black dress, even in the dark, Waverly was the brightest thing in the gym. "
30 " I'm scared to disturb the balance, though- that delicate equilibrium. Marshall and I can only exist in the narrow spaces where I'm not me and he is not him. "
31 " I don't do anything I'm not good at. "
32 " He sighs, smiling a resigned little smile. "Waverly, you make me want to die, but it's in the best way. You have no idea. "
33 " I'm so fucking real that it hurts. "
34 " But the phenomenon she's describing is the hardest thing to master- the fact that who you need to be changes based on who is in the room, and still, it's all actually just you. For the first time in my life, I've know what it's like to feel ecstatic about someone- not the right way, but my way. I thought he made me a different person altogether, but maybe I was always holding those pieces inside me, waiting for a chance to use them. "
35 " There’s something awful about the sun. "
36 " The gap between myself and the facade of myself must be growing exponentially. The "
37 " All the things are want are hard to find the words for. "
38 " The words are sleek and leaden in the ballistic chamber of my mouth. This is the poisonous part of my nature that Maribeth knows better than anyone. The part of me she has always valued most. I might look tidy and self-contained, but when the chips are down, I can be positively lethal. "
39 " Love lands in my chest with a thunk. I know I must look like every close-up shot of every lascivious camp counselor who ever walked into a barn or darkened farmhouse to receive a pitchfork to the heart. The hapless victim. The plunge and the stagger. They never know enough to just fall down. "
40 " It's so hard to love someone when you have to do it in the open. The second you expose a thing to air, it has already begun to oxidize. "