Everyone thought that things were getting back to normal. They had no idea that normal didn’t exist for me any more. Normal had been smashed on the rocks beneath the bridge.
Her brain is like a filing cabinet – everything neatly stored in categories. My brain is more like soup – everything all blended and mushed together.
This is the real way a friendship ends. Not with some huge screaming row, but with a gradual withdrawal. You’d think it would be less painful this way.
To be perfectly honest, it scared me a little. You get so used to seeing the same thing in the mirror every day you stop thinking about what you look like.
I called no one, and no one called me. I was suffocating with loneliness. The pain was almost physical. I felt like tearing myself apart. I wanted to escape from my own skin.
Kind of just existed from day to day, on weird plateau of feeling nothingness.
I wanted to grab his stupid ears and smash his stupid head against the door until his stupid brains leaked out. Instead, I did nothing.
It’s amazing, the lies you can tell yourself. Even more amazing, the lies you can believe when you’re desperate enough.
Has this version of me been lurking there all along, somewhere deep below the surface, biding its time, waiting for its chance to make an appearance?
The butterflies in my stomach turn into vampire bats as we pull up to the school.
Everyone’s got secrets, Jem. It’s what makes people interesting.