184
" What do I do now?” I ask desperately. “Tell me! What do I do now?”
He remains calm.
He looks at me closely and says, “Keep living, Ed…. It’s only the pages that stop here.”
He stays perhaps another ten minutes, probably due to the trauma that has strapped itself to me. I remain standing, trying to contemplate and recover from what’s transpired.
“I really think I’d better go,” he says again, this item with more finality.
With difficulty, I walk him to the door.
We say goodbye on the front porch, and he walks back up the street.
I wonder about his name, but I’m sure I’ll earn it soon enough.
He’s written about this, I’m sure, the bastard. All of it.
As he walks up the street he pulls a small notebook from his pocket and writes a few things down.
It makes me think maybe I should write about all this myself. After all, I;m the one who did all the work.
I’d start with the bank robbery.
Something like, “The gunman is useless.”
The odds are, however, that he’s beaten me to it already
It’ll be his name on the cover of all these words, not mine.
He’ll get all the credit.
Or the crap, if her does a shit job.
But I just remembered the I was the one- not him- who gave life to these pages. I was the one who-
I tell me to stop.
It’s an inner voice and it’s loud.
All day, I think about many things, though I try not to. I look through the folder and find everything as he said. All the ideas are written in and people are sketched. Scratchy excerpts are stapled together. Beginnings and endings merge and bend.
Hours wander past.
Days follow them.
I don’t leave the shack, and I don’t answer the phone. I barely even eat. The Doorman sits with me as the minutes pass by.
For a long time, I wonder what I’m waiting for, but I understand it’s just like he said.
I guess it’s for life beyond these pages. "
― Markus Zusak , I Am the Messenger
198
" It’s just… I wish it was easier, for me, you know?” I make a special point not to look at her. “I wish it was someone else who was chosen for this. Someone competent. If only I didn’t stop that robbery. I wish I didn’t have to go through with it all.” It comes gushing out, with words like spilled milk. “And I wish it was me with you and not that other guy. I wish it was my own skin touching with yours…”
And there you have it.
Stupidity in its purest form.
“Oh, Ed.” Audrey looks away. “Oh, Ed.”
Our feet dangle.
I watch them, and I watch the jeans on Audrey’s legs.
We only sit there now.
Audrey and me.
And discomfort.
Squeezed in, between us.
She soon says, “You’re my best friend, Ed.”
“I know.”
You can kill a man with those words.
No gun.
No bullets.
Just words and a girl. "
― Markus Zusak , I Am the Messenger
200
" When the job’s done, he smacks me on the shoulder and we run off like handsome thieves. We both laugh and run, and the moment is so thick around me that I feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.
I love the laughter of this night.
Our footsteps run, and I don’t want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid my awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don’t know what to say or what to do.
For now, just let us run.
We run straight through the laughter of the night. "
― Markus Zusak , I Am the Messenger