The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2) QUOTES

1 " Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.” THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, JOHN LE CARRÉ "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

2 " I’m not stupid. I’ve never been stupid. I got good grades. I paid attention when someone was teaching me something, and I made it a point to learn it fast. Fine, I didn’t have Holmes’s training or her aptitude, but just because I wasn’t a genius didn’t mean that I wasn’t smart. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

3 " According to my instructions, I’m supposed to laugh at you now.”

“Go ahead?”

The voice managed a kind of embarrassed chuckle.
More soft tapping sounds, but the voice spoke again before they finished.

“I won’t give you my identity. It’s not important. Know that I am an interested party, and I want you to begin booking your travel back home. You have no particular skills. You know this. You’re a fairly standard teenage boy. You have no use but to be used.”

“I know it’s fun to be cryptic, but that last thing made zero sense.” I wanted the voice to keep talking, because as I wiggled my hands, I realized the zip tie wasn’t as tight as it needed to be.

“Think of yourself as a package. It’s Christmas, so picture a nicely wrapped present. Charlotte carries it around. It’s heavy in her arms, but it’s pleasing to look at it. Maybe the package talks. It’s witty. It’s flattering. It makes her feel special, and she likes that feeling. And one day Charlotte leaves it somewhere in public, and poof, it is taken from her. Charlotte is sad. Then furious. Charlotte will do anything to get her present back. Horrible things. Things that will end in her death, or imprisonment. We don’t want Charlotte to do these things.”

“So in this weird children’s story you’re telling me, I’m a talking package.” I’d put my wrists between my knees, and slowly, slowly, I worked one curled hand out of its binding. “That’s a pretty stupid extended metaphor. Did you fail English class? You were more of a math person, weren’t you? "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

4 " Holmes, my patron saint of trapdoors and fail-safes, of always remembering to pour the foundation so that, later, if you needed to, you could build a brilliant house on top. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

5 " Dicere quae puduit, scribere jussit amor "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

6 " She smiled at me, that one particular smile I hardly ever saw, the one that could open padlocks, Yale locks, bank vaults, the one that was a trapdoor down into everything. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

7 " Wait" I said "You wanted to hit me the other night?"
Holmes lifted her head from the pillow.
"I want to hit everything all the time "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

8 " I tended to spend too much time with my favorite things, loved them too hard until I wore them down. After a while, they became more like a shorthand for who I was and less like things I actually enjoyed. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

9 " It’s strange to grieve for your former self, and still I think it’s something that any girl understands. I’ve shed so many skins, I hardly know what I am now—muscle, maybe, or just memory. Perhaps just the will to keep going. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

10 " I’m a teenage girl. He is my boy best friend. We would be everything to each other until we couldn’t. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

11 " There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

12 " Maybe this is what happened when you built a friendship on a foundation of mutual disaster. It collapsed the second things righted themselves, left you desperate for the next earthquake. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

13 " She looked like a whisper made real. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

14 " It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“That’ll be written on a few tombstones before this is over, "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

15 " You know, I told Dad not to tell you about that whole near-death thing. I said that you'd overreact, and I was right."
There was a long pause, and then the shouting got somewhat louder. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

16 " I imagine she'd do anything to keep you alive. But giving her your heart is like handing a glass figurine to a child. She'll flip it over, peer through it like a lends. Shake it to see if it makes a sound. In the end, it will slip her hands and shatter. In the end, it's your fault. You were the one who gave it to her. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

17 " There's not a lot you can control, you know. Where you're born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it's important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity." She smiled, ducking her head "So I blow things up."
"Did you hear that? You almost said something profound. You came so close . "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

18 " With the air of long practice, Holmes waited until Milo raised his mug to his lips, and then reached up to whack his elbow. Coffee splattered down his front. She smiled her black-cat smile.
"When we're finished here, I'll fetch you a bleach pen and a new shirt," Peterson said to a sputtering Milo. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

19 " Jamie Watson," he said. "Do you know, you look just like your father when I met him. Which is making all of this quite a bit stranger for me, so could you please get out of the bed you're sharing with my niece?"
I scrambled to my feet. "We're not - I'm not - it's very nice to meet you." Behind me, Holmes was snickering, and I rounded on her. "Come on, really? Some backup would be nice."
"So you want me to give him the details, then?"
"Do you want me to give you a shovel so you can keep on digging me this hole?"
"Please," she shot back. "I'd rather watch. You're doing such a nice job of it, after all. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

20 " Friendship I understood. There had to be an arc there, some kind of story that the two of you were telling just by being together. Something made up from what you wanted from the world and what you got instead. A story you reminded each other of when you needed to feel understood. "

― Brittany Cavallaro , The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)