Guess Who Movie Quotes

When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were thing like astronaut, president, or in my case… princess. When we were ten, they asked again and we answered - rock star, cowboy, or in my case, gold medalist. But now that we've grown up, they want a serious answer. Well, how 'bout this: who the hell knows?! This isn't the time to make hard and fast decisions, its time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love - a lot. Major in philosophy 'cause there's no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent. So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday, when they ask again what we want to be… we won't have to guess. We'll know. [from the movie]

So let me help you out. My favorite color is-hell, I don't know. I've never cared enough to think about it. My favorite movie is-what else-ZOMBIELAND. But not because the good guys win in the end, though that's a plus, but because Emma Stone is hot." I snorted. He was SUCH a guy. "My favorite band is-" "Let me guess," I interjected. "White Zombie? Slayer?" "Red. And no, not just because I want zombies to bleed.What about you? Who do you like? Because honestly, I'm surprised you know White Z and Slayer." "I like Red,too, but I'm partial to Skillet. Used to listen to them with my sister. But why wouldn't I know the other bands?" "You look so angelic." "And do you think angels are hot?" I asked primly, trying to play it cool so that I wouldn't reveal what a mess I was on the inside. All this time, he'd wanted to get to know me and date me. What craziness! "The hottest.

A rap at the back door made her jump, and she peered through the window for a long time before she eased open the door a crack. She left the security chain on. 'What do you want, Richard?' Richard Morrell's police cruiser was parked in the drive. He hadn't flashed any lights or howled any sirens, so she supposed it wasn't an emergency, exactly. But she knew him well enough to know he didn't pay social visits, at least not to the Glass House. 'Good question,' Richard said. 'I guess I want a nice girl who can cook, likes action movies, and looks good in short skirts. But I'll settle for you taking the chain off the door and letting me in.

But it’s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it’s tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn’t know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool Girl – I couldn’t have been Cool Girl with anyone else. I wouldn’t have wanted to. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy some of it: I ate a MoonPie, I walked barefoot, I stopped worrying. I watched dumb movies and ate chemically laced foods. I didn’t think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn’t worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn’t worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn’t even worry whether the movie made sense. I didn’t worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.

Leola Mae Harmon. I saw a movie about her on the Lifetime channel. Leola was an air force nurse who was in a car accident and the lower part of her face got all mangled, but then Armand Assante, who plays a plastic surgeon, said he could fix her. Leola had to endure hours of painful reconstructive surgery, during which her husband left her because she didn't have any lips (which I guess is why the movie is called Why Me?). Armand Assante said he would make her a new pair of lips, only the other air force doctors didn't like the fact that he wanted to make them out of skin from Leola's vagina. But he did it anyway, and then he and Leola got married and worked together to help give other accident victims vagina lips. And the whole thing turned out to have been based on a true story.

More than anything else, I miss the hope. In jail, we we had the hope that we might get out, go to college, have fun, go to the movies. I am twenty-seven. I don't know what it means to love. I don't want to be secret and hidden forever. I want to know, to know who this Nassrin is.You'd call it the ordeal of freedom, I guess.

It’s hard to look back on your life and point to one event–one moment–that changed everything and set you on the path that made you…you. That only happens in movies. Most people’s lives are a series of millions of messy little moments strung together adding up to a messy little life. But sometimes, you can look back and see a pattern forming… see a clear path cutting through the mess. It makes you wonder, do we even have a choice at all? Or was that path going to form no matter what we did? Yeah, it’s easy to look back and see the pattern. It’s easy to second-guess every decision you made and figure out what you would’ve done differently. But none of that much matters now. It’s all in the past. Can’t waste time thinking about who i was, who i could’ve been. All that matters now is who i am.

One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz—-ten definitions of a reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader. I have mislaid the list, but as far as I remember the definitions went something like this. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good reader: 1. The reader should belong to a book club. 2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine. 3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle. 4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none. 5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie. 6. The reader should be a budding author. 7. The reader should have imagination. 8. The reader should have memory. 9. The reader should have a dictionary. 10. The reader should have some artistic sense. The students leaned heavily on emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historical angle. Of course, as you have guessed, the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense–-which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance.

...in life you will encounter some very tough times, but you can find your strength in God. If there is something missing in your life, seek the Lord. If you once had him in your life and now he seems far away, guess who moved? He is still there; just go to him. He loves you with an everlasting love, and through obedience to him all commitments will endure.

Few people understood the exceptional role the civil rights movement had on the white boys and girls of the South. Bill Clinton would never have become who he was without the shining example of Martin Luther King. The same is true of Jimmy Carter and Fritz Hollings and Richard and Joe Riley. Imagine this: you’re a little white kid and you watch firehoses turned on people who don’t seem to be hurting anyone, and fierce dogs being tuned on young men who carry signs about freedom. We white kids grew up watching movies and TV and guess what we had learned to do? We had learned to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

Q. Your original, self-published version of The Martian became a phenomenon online. Were you expecting the overwhelmingly positive reception the book received? A. I had no idea it was going to do so well. The story had been available for free on my website for months, and I assumed anyone who wanted to read it had already read it. A few readers had requested I post a Kindle version because it’s easier to download that way. So I went ahead and did it, setting the price to the minimum Amazon would allow. As it sold more and more copies I just watched in awe. Q. Film rights to The Martian were sold to writer-producer Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes, X-Men: First Class). What was your first reaction? A. Of course I’m thrilled to have a movie in the works. The movie deal and print publishing deal came within a week of each other, so I was a little shell-shocked. In fact, it was such a sudden launch into the big leagues that I literally had a difficult time believing it. I actually worried it could all be an elaborate scam. So I guess that was my first reaction: “Is this really happening!?

In history, in a movie, in a book, you can always tell who the heroes are; they're the ones rushing into a burning building, giving crucial testimony in the courtroom, refusing to step to the back of the bus. They're the ones who act the way you hope you would, if the moment came to you. But the movies and the history books never tell you how they felt, those heroes, if they were angry or uncertain or afraid, if they had to think a long time before they did the right thing, if they even knew what the right thing was or just made a headlong guess, just leaped and hoped they landed instead of falling. They never tell you what it's like to stand on the brink, wishing you were somewhere--or someone--else, wishing the choice had never come your way and you could just go back to your safe, ordinary, everyday life. Because you know what else the books never say? Nobody, hero or not, really wants to rush into a fire. Because fire burns.

Look in it,' he said, smiling slightly, as you do when you have given someone a present which you know will please him and he is unwrapping it before your eyes. I opened it. In the folder I found four 8×10 glossy photos, obviously professionally done; they looked like the kind of stills that the publicity departments of movie studios put out. The photos showed a Greek vase, on it a painting of a male figure who we recognized as Hermes. Twined around the vase the double helix confronted us, done in red glaze against a black background. The DNA molecule. There could be no mistake. 'Twenty-three or -four hundred years ago,' Fat said. 'Not the picture but the krater, the pottery.' 'A pot,' I said. 'I saw it in a museum in Athens. It's authentic. Thats not a matter of my own opinion; I'm not qualified to judge such matters; it's authenticity has been established by the museum authorities. I talked with one of them. He hadn't realized what the design shows; he was very interested when I discussed it with him. This form of vase, the krater, was the shape later used as the baptismal font. That was one of the Greek words that came into my head in March 1974, the word “krater”. I heard it connected with another Greek word: “poros”. The words “poros krater” essentially mean “limestone font”. ' There could be no doubt; the design, predating Christianity, was Crick and Watson's double helix model at which they had arrived after so many wrong guesses, so much trial-and-error work. Here it was, faithfully reproduced. 'Well?' I said. 'The so-called intertwined snakes of the caduceus. Originally the caduceus, which is still the symbol of medicine was the staff of- not Hermes-but-' Fat paused, his eyes bright. 'Of Asklepios. It has a very specific meaning, besides that of wisdom, which the snakes allude to; it shows that the bearer is a sacred person and not to be molested...which is why Hermes the messenger of the gods, carried it.' None of us said anything for a time. Kevin started to utter something sarcastic, something in his dry, witty way, but he did not; he only sat without speaking. Examining the 8×10 glossies, Ginger said, 'How lovely!' 'The greatest physician in all human history,' Fat said to her. 'Asklepios, the founder of Greek medicine. The Roman Emperor Julian-known to us as Julian the Apostate because he renounced Christianity-conside​red Asklepios as God or a god; Julian worshipped him. If that worship had continued, the entire history of the Western world would have basically changed

Angels can’t die yet I imagine it. A psychiatrist at that place once told me it was a projection. Like with movies. Light passes through the film and it gets bigger on the screen. I guess he was saying thought and faith have that kind of power. But he had no fucking idea who he was dealing with.

The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the collective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly, a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo, Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site of Powhatan’s village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative performances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks, candy, and popcorn. In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when we can watch the movie?

That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men—friends, coworkers, strangers—giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much—no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version—maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”) I waited patiently—years—for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy. But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed—she wasn’t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren’t, then there was something wrong with you. But it’s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it’s tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met Nick, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy. He was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn’t know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool

It should be illegal for a woman to look as good as you do.” “Really?” She peered down at herself again, but saw nothing all that spectacular. “I’m glad you like it.” “I love it. I love you.” He dug in his pocket. “When I left today, it was for this.” Speechless, Priss watched as he opened a now-wet jeweler’s box. Inside, securely nestled in velvet, was a beautiful diamond engagement ring. Her heart nearly stopped. “I wanted it to be a surprise.” There were no words. Her eyes suddenly burned and her throat went tight. Trace took her hand and slipped the ring on her finger. The fit was perfect, but then, anything Trace did, he did right. “Priss?” Using the edge of his fist, he lifted her chin. “We’ve been to movies and plays, to small diners and fancy restaurants. I’ve taken you dancing and hiking, to the amusement park and the zoo.” Sounding like a choked frog, Priss said, “All the things I never got to do growing up.” “But there’s so much more, honey.” He moved wet tendrils of hair away from her face and over her shoulder. “I was trying to give you time to enjoy it all.” “No!” Priss did not want him second-guessing his intent. “I don’t need any more time. Really I don’t.” Both still very attentive, Matt and Chris snickered. Trace just smiled at her. Closing her hand into a fist, she held the ring tight. “All I need, all I want, is you.” “Glad to hear it, because I’m not an overly patient guy. Hell, I think I knew you were the one the day you showed up in Murray’s office.” He kissed the tip of her nose, her lips, her chin. “You were so damned outrageous, and so pushy, that you scared me half to death.” “You felt me up,” Priss reminded him. “But that was a first for me, too.” “I remember it well.” He treated her to a deeper kiss, and ended it with a groan. “Every day since then, I’ve wanted you more. Even when you worried me, or lied to me, or made me insane, I admired you for it.

And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved. Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour. On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again." And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.

SOCIAL/GENERAL ICEBREAKERS 1. What do you think of the movie/restaurant/party? 2. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken. 3. What’s your favorite thing to do on a rainy day? 4. If you could replay any moment in your life, what would it be? 5. What one thing would you really like to own? Why? 6. Tell me about one of your favorite relatives. 7. What was it like in the town where you grew up? 8. What would you like to come back as in your next life? 9. Tell me about your kids. 10. What do you think is the perfect age? Why? 11. What is a typical day like for you? 12. Of all the places you’ve lived, tell me about the one you like the best. 13. What’s your favorite holiday? What do you enjoy about it? 14. What are some of your family traditions that you particularly enjoy? 15. Tell me about the first car you ever bought. 16. How has the Internet affected your life? 17. Who were your idols as a kid? Have they changed? 18. Describe a memorable teacher you had. 19. Tell me about a movie/book you’ve seen or read more than once. 20. What’s your favorite restaurant? Why? 21. Tell me why you were named ______. What is the origin of your last name? 22. Tell me about a place you’ve visited that you hope never to return to. get over your mom’s good intentions. 23. What’s the best surprise you’ve ever received? 24. What’s the neatest surprise you’ve ever planned and pulled off for someone else? 25. Skiing here is always challenging. What are some of your favorite places to ski? 26. Who would star as you in a movie about your life? Why that person? 27. Who is the most famous person you’ve met? 28. Tell me about some of your New Year’s resolutions. 29. What’s the most antiestablishment thing you’ve ever done? 30. Describe a costume that you wore to a party. 31. Tell me about a political position you’d like to hold. 32. What song reminds you of an incident in your life? 33. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve eaten? 34. What’s the most unforgettable coincidence you’ve experienced or heard about? 35. How are you able to tell if that melon is ripe? 36. What motion picture star would you like to interview? Why? 37. Tell me about your family. 38. What aroma brings forth a special memory? 39. Describe the scariest person you ever met. 40. What’s your favorite thing to do alone? 41. Tell me about a childhood friend who used to get you in trouble. 42. Tell me about a time when you had too much to eat or drink. 43. Describe your first away-from-home living quarters or experience. 44. Tell me about a time that you lost a job. 45. Share a memory of one of your grandparents. 46. Describe an embarrassing moment you’ve had. 47. Tell me something most people would never guess about you. 48. What would you do if you won a million dollars? 49. Describe your ideal weather and why. 50. How did you learn to ski/hang drywall/play piano?

What’s your dad doing for his bachelor party?” I laugh. “Have you met my dad? He’s the last person who would ever have a bachelor party. He doesn’t even have any guy friends to have a party with!” I stop and consider this. “Well, I guess Josh is the closest thing he has. We haven’t seen much of him since he went to school, but he and my dad still e-mail every so often.” “I don’t get what your family sees in that guy,” Peter says sourly. “What’s so great about him?” It’s a touchy subject. Peter’s paranoid my dad likes Josh better than him, and I try to tell him it’s not a contest--which it definitely isn’t. Daddy’s known Josh since he was a kid. They trade comic books, for Pete’s sake. So, no contest. Obviously my dad likes Josh better. But only because he knows him better. And only because they’re more alike: Neither of them is cool. And Peter’s definitely cool. My dad is bewildered by cool. “Josh loves my dad’s cooking.” “So do I!” “They have the same taste in movies.” Peter throws in, “And Josh was never in a hot tub video with one of his daughters.” “Oh my God, let it go already! My dad’s forgotten about that.” “Forgotten” might be too strong of a word. Maybe more like he’s never brought it up again and he hopefully never will. “I find that hard to believe.” “Well, believe it. My dad is a very forgiving, very forgetful man.

It was weird to be with her in a group. I kept wanting to stop the conversation to make sure everybody had noticed what a cool thing she’d just said or done. It wasn’t because I was insecure or worried that they wouldn’t like her. I just wanted to have someone to share it all with, like that burst of excitement you get when you meet someone who likes the same obscure band or has the same favorite movie. I guess I was a Karen fan, and I wanted to start a fan club.

Korean woman who had escaped from the North to the South. She was talking about love. ‘If you grow up in the West,’ she said, ‘you may think romance occurs naturally, but it does not. You learn how to be romantic from books and movies, or from observation. But there was no model to learn from in my parents’ time. They didn’t even have the language to talk about their feelings. You just had to guess how your beloved felt from the look in his eyes, or the tone of her voice as she spoke to you.

But I can assume he wasn’t hugged a whole lot. His family didn’t pray before dinner. They didn’t go camping or snuggle together on the couch for movie night. I can assume his father never helped him with his algebra homework. I can guess that at least once, someone forgot to pick him up from school. I can guess that at some point in his life, no one was paying attention to what he watched on TV. And I can guess that he’s been smacked across the face by someone who should’ve known better, someone he trusted. I flip through

Hallie didn't believe she was invulnerable. She was never one of those daredevil types; she knew she could get hurt. What I think she meant was that she was lucky to be on her way to Nicaragua. It was the slowest thing to sink into my head, how happy she was. Happy to be leaving. We'd had one time of perfect togetherness in our adult lives, the year when we were both in college in Tucson-her first year, my last-and living together for the first time away from Doc Homer. That winter I'd wanted to fail a subject just so I could hang back, stay there with her, the two of us walking around the drafty house in sweatshirts and wool socks and understanding each other precisely. Bringing each other cups of tea without having to ask. So I stayed on in Tucson for medical school, instead of going to Boston as I'd planned, and met Carlo in Parasitology. Hallie, around the same time, befriended some people who ran a safehouse for Central American refugees. After that we'd have strangers in our kitchen every time of night, kids scared senseless, people with all kinds of damage. Our life was never again idyllic. I should have seen it coming. Once she and I had gone to see a documentary on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was these Americans who volunteered without our government's blessing to fight against Franco and Hitler in the Spanish Civil War. At that point in U.S. history fascism was only maybe wrong, whereas communism was definitely. When we came home from the movie Hallie cried. Not because of the people who gave up life and limb only to lose Spain to Franco, and not for the ones who came back and were harassed for the rest of their lives for being Reds. The tragedy for Hallie was that there might never be a cause worth risking everything for in our lifetime. She was nineteen years old then, and as she lay blowing her nose and sobbing on my bed she told me this. That there were no real causes left. Now she had one-she was off to Nicaragua, a revolution of co-op farms and literacy crusades-and so I guess she was lucky. Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one really gets the chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact way they wish for it to be altered.

Getting back to Audrey, though, I should really feel complimented that she won’t ever touch me because she likes me more than anyone else. It makes perfect sense, really, doesn’t it? If she ever gets down or depressed, i can make out the figure of her through the front window of the shack. She comes in and we drink cheap beer or wine and watch a movie or all three. Something old and long like Ben-Hur that stretches into the night. She’ll be next to me on the couch in her flannel shirt and jeans that have been cut into shorts,and eventually, when she’s asleep, I’ll bring a blanket out and cover her up. I kiss her cheek. I stroke her hair. I think of how she lives alone, just like me, and how she never had any real family, and how she only has sex with people. She never lets any love get in the way. I think she had a family once, but it was one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other situations. There’s no shortage of them around here. I think she loved them and all she ever did was hurt her. That’s why she refuses to love. Anybody. I guess she feels better off that way, and who can blame her? When she sleeps on my couch, I think about all that. Everytime. I cover her up, then go to the bed and dream. With my eyes open.

But Emma resists all of Galen's reasonings, based on the fact that it doesn't "feel right." Speaking of things that don't feel right... He pulls his new SUV into her driveway, the excitement sloshing in his stomach like high tide. As he steps out, he notices how much he likes sliding down instead of hoisting himself up from a little compact death trap. He's almost glad Rayna tied the red car around a tree-except that she and Emma could have gotten hurt. He shakes his head, crunching across the gravel of Emma's driveway in his suede Timberlands. Even over that, he hears the thud of his heart. Is it faster than usual? He's never noticed it before, so he can't tell. Shrugging it off as paranoia, he knocks on the door then folds his hands in front of him. I shouldn't be doing this. This is wrong. She could still belong to Grom. But when Emma answers the door, everything seems right again. Her little purple dress makes the violet in her eyes jump out at him. "Sorry," she says. "Mom threw a fit when I tried to leave the house in jeans. She's old-school I guess. You know. 'Thou must dress up for the movies,' says the woman who doesn't even own a dress." "She did me a favor," he says, then shoves his hands in his pockets. More like she did me in.

Is she really old enough to have crushes on boys? I feel like she’s too young for all that.” “I had crushes on boys when I was nine,” I tell him. I’m still thinking about Kitty. I wonder how I can make it so she isn’t mad at me anymore. Somehow I don’t think snickerdoodles will cut it this time. “Who?” Josh asks me. “Who what?” Maybe if I can somehow convince Daddy to buy her a puppy… “Who was your first crush?” “Hmm. My first real crush?” I had kindergarten and first- and second-grade crushes aplenty, but they don’t really count. “Like the first one that really mattered?” “Sure.” “Well…I guess Peter Kavinsky.” Josh practically gags. “Kavinsky? Are you kidding me? He’s so obvious. I thought you’d be into someone more…I don’t know, subtle. Peter Kavinsky’s such a cliché. He’s like a cardboard cutout of a ‘cool guy’ in a movie about high school.” I shrug. “You asked.” “Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “Just…wow.” “He used to be different. I mean, he was still very Peter, but less so.” When Josh looks unconvinced, I say, “You’re a boy, so you can’t understand what I’m talking about.” “You’re right. I don’t understand!” “Hey, you’re the one who had a crush on Ms. Rothschild!” Josh turns red. “She was really pretty back then!” “Uh-huh.” I give him a knowing look. “She was really ‘pretty.’” Our across-the-street neighbor Ms. Rothschild used to mow her lawn in terry-cloth short shorts and a string bikini top. The neighborhood boys would conveniently come and play in Josh’s yard on those days. “Anyway, Ms. Rothschild wasn’t my first crush.” “She wasn’t?” “No. You were.

I don’t like stories. I like moments. I like night better than day, moon better than sun, and here-and-now better than any sometime-later. I also like birds, mushrooms, the blues, peacock feathers, black cats, blue-eyed people, heraldry, astrology, criminal stories with lots of blood, and ancient epic poems where human heads can hold conversations with former friends and generally have a great time for years after they’ve been cut off. I like good food and good drink, sitting in a hot bath and lounging in a snowbank, wearing everything I own at once, and having everything I need close at hand. I like speed and that special ache in the pit of the stomach when you accelerate to the point of no return. I like to frighten and to be frightened, to amuse and to confound. I like writing on the walls so that no one can guess who did it, and drawing so that no one can guess what it is. I like doing my writing using a ladder or not using it, with a spray can or squeezing the paint from a tube. I like painting with a brush, with a sponge, and with my fingers. I like drawing the outline first and then filling it in completely, so that there’s no empty space left. I like letters as big as myself, but I like very small ones as well. I like directing those who read them here and there by means of arrows, to other places where I also wrote something, but I also like to leave false trails and false signs. I like to tell fortunes with runes, bones, beans, lentils, and I Ching. Hot climates I like in the books and movies; in real life, rain and wind. Generally rain is what I like most of all. Spring rain, summer rain, autumn rain. Any rain, anytime. I like rereading things I’ve read a hundred times over. I like the sound of the harmonica, provided I’m the one playing it. I like lots of pockets, and clothes so worn that they become a kind of second skin instead of something that can be taken off. I like guardian amulets, but specific ones, so that each is responsible for something separate, not the all-inclusive kind. I like drying nettles and garlic and then adding them to anything and everything. I like covering my fingers with rubber cement and then peeling it off in front of everybody. I like sunglasses. Masks, umbrellas, old carved furniture, copper basins, checkered tablecloths, walnut shells, walnuts themselves, wicker chairs, yellowed postcards, gramophones, beads, the faces on triceratopses, yellow dandelions that are orange in the middle, melting snowmen whose carrot noses have fallen off, secret passages, fire-evacuation-route placards; I like fretting when in line at the doctor’s office, and screaming all of a sudden so that everyone around feels bad, and putting my arm or leg on someone when asleep, and scratching mosquito bites, and predicting the weather, keeping small objects behind my ears, receiving letters, playing solitaire, smoking someone else’s cigarettes, and rummaging in old papers and photographs. I like finding something lost so long ago that I’ve forgotten why I needed it in the first place. I like being really loved and being everyone’s last hope, I like my own hands—they are beautiful, I like driving somewhere in the dark using a flashlight, and turning something into something completely different, gluing and attaching things to each other and then being amazed that it actually worked. I like preparing things both edible and not, mixing drinks, tastes, and scents, curing friends of the hiccups by scaring them. There’s an awful lot of stuff I like.

It is no surprise that, on the whole, professors lean left. So do artists, poets, and people who love to watch foreign movies. One of the strongest personality correlates of left-wing politics is the trait of openness to experience, a trait that describes people who crave new ideas and experiences and who tend to be interested in changing traditional arrangements.40 On the other hand, members of the military, law enforcement personnel, and students who have well-organized dorm rooms tend to lean right. (Seriously. You can guess people’s political leanings at better-than-chance levels just from photographs of their desks.)41 Social conservatives tend to be lower on openness to experience and higher on conscientiousness—they prefer things to be orderly and predictable, they are more likely to show up on time for meetings, and they are more likely to see the value of traditional arrangements.

In order to understand what this lady was saying about her upstairs neighbors,” I went on, because no one else was saying anything, “you have to turn the situation around. If the two sweet homosexuals hadn’t fed the cats at all but instead had pelted them with stones or tossed poisoned pork chops down to them from their balcony, then they would have been just plain dirty faggots. I think that’s what Claire meant about Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? That the friendly Sidney Poitier was a sweet boy too. That the person who made that movie was absolutely no better than the lady in that program. In fact, Sidney Poitier was supposed to serve as a role model. An example for all those other nasty Negroes, the uppity Negroes. The dangerous Negroes, the muggers and the rapists and the crack dealers. When you people put on a good-looking suit like Sidney’s and start behaving like the perfect son-in-law, we white folks will be your friends.

My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I’m chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher!

By the end of the day, everyone was talking about my stupid drawing and how Henry was going to have to get a restraining order before I started showing up outside his window in the middle of the night. It was embarrassing. I wanted to melt into the floor just to stop people from looking at me. I guess Henry was embarrassed too, because he made his friend Anthony pull me aside to tell me that Henry wasn’t into girls who looked like me. I remember not understanding it. Girls who looked like me. Did he mean girls with dark hair? Girls who wore jeans instead of skirts? Girls who didn’t have their ears pierced? Or did he mean something else? For years I watched him hold hands with girls who didn’t look anything like me. And some of them had dark hair. Some of them wore jeans. Plenty of them didn’t have their ears pierced. But they all had one thing in common: None of them were Asian. Now when I have a crush on someone, I don’t wonder if they like the same music as me, or if they watch the same kind of movies, or if we’ll get along the way Jamie and I did. I wonder if they like Asian girls.

My Father Comes Home From Work" My father comes home from work sweating through layers of bleached cotton t-shirts sweating through his wool plaid shirt. He kisses my mother starching our school dresses at the ironing board, swings his metal lunchbox onto the formica kitchen table rattling the remnants of the lunch she packed that morning before daylight: crumbs of baloney sandwiches, empty metal thermos of coffee, cores of hard red apples that fueled his body through the packing and unpacking of sides of beef into the walk-in refrigerators at James Allen and Sons Meat Packers. He is twenty-six. Duty propels him each day through the dark to Butcher Town where steers walk streets from pen to slaughterhouse. He whispers Jesus Christ to no one in particular. We hear him-- me, my sister Linda, my baby brother Willy, and Mercedes la cubana’s daughter who my mother babysits. When he comes home we have to be quiet. He comes into the dark living room. Dick Clark’s American Bandstand lights my father’s face white and unlined like a movie star’s. His black hair is combed into a wavy pompadour. He sinks into the couch, takes off work boots thick damp socks, rises to carry them to the porch. Leaving the room he jerks his chin toward the teen gyrations on the screen, says, I guess it beats carrying a brown bag. He pauses, for a moment to watch.

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

I don’t know…is it just me, or…” He leans in closer, now he’s listening. “What?” I take a deep breath. “Is it…a little weird? I mean, first we were fake, and then we weren’t, and then we had a fight, and now here we are and you’re eating fried chicken. It’s like we did everything in the wrong order, and it’s good, but it’s…still kind of upside down.” And also were you trying to feel me up during the movie? “I guess it’s a little weird,” he admits. I sip my sweet tea, relieved that he doesn’t think I’m the weird one for bringing up all the weirdness. He grins at me. “Maybe what we need is a new contract.” I can’t tell if he’s joking or if he’s serious, so I play along. “What would go in the contract?” “Off the top of my head…I guess I’d have to call you every night before I went to bed. You’d agree to come to all my lacrosse games. Some practices, too. I’d have to come to your house for dinner. You’d have to come to parties with me.” I make a face at the parties part. “Let’s just do the things we want to do. Like before.” Suddenly I hear Margot’s voice in my head. “Let’s…let’s have fun.” He nods, and now he’s the one who looks relieved. “Yeah!” I like that he doesn’t take things too seriously. In other people that could be annoying, but not him. It’s one of his best qualities, I think. That and his face. I could stare at his face all day long. I sip sweet tea out of my straw and look at him. A contract might actually be good for us. It could help us to head problems off at the pass and keep us accountable. I think Margot would be proud of me for this.

Where’s Sam?” Brianna asked. “He’s out. So is Edilio,” Dekka said. “You going to tell us what’s in the bag or do we have to guess?” Brianna stopped. She was disappointed. In her imagination the big revelation would have been to an admiring Sam Temple. He was the one she wanted to impress. Failing that, Edilio, who was generally warm and sweet to her. But she was tired and wanted to put the bag down. Also, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer. She climbed nimbly up to the top deck of the boat, grinned, and said, “Is it anyone’s birthday? Because I have a present.” “Breeze,” Dekka warned. So Brianna opened the bag. Dekka looked inside. “What is it?” So Brianna upended the bag. Dead lizards, broken eggs, and Drake’s head landed on the antiskid flooring. “Ahhhh!” Astrid screamed. “Ah, Jesus!” Dekka yelled. “I know,” Brianna said proudly. What lay there was something to strike envy into the heart of a horror movie special-effects expert. The two halves of Drake’s head had started to rejoin. But because the halves had been tossed wildly together, the process was very incomplete. Very. In fact at the moment the halves were backward, so that the left half was looking one direction and the right half another. Sections of neck and spine stuck both up and down. The part that held most of Drake’s mouth was stuffed with hair from the back of his head. And, somehow, bits of dead lizard were squeezed in between. But the dead lizards thus incorporated were no longer dead. And there was egg white smeared across one eye. The mouth was trying to speak and not managing it. A lizard tail whipped one eye—hard to tell if it was left or right—a parody of Drake’s whip arm. The three of them stared: Astrid with blue eyes wide, hand over mouth; Dekka with mouth wide open and brow furrowed; Brianna like a proud school kid showing off her art project. “Ta-da!” Brianna said.

Sean Penn mourned the death of the fifty-eight-year-old socialist creep. Sean wrote in a statement sent to the Hollywood Reporter: “Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion.” He added: “I lost a friend I was blessed to have.” Penn needs to tell you that he knew the guy. A world leader. That’s cool. I guess playing Jeff Spicoli and marrying Madonna wasn’t enough (one made your career, the other ruined your urinary tract). Yeah, this is the same chap who told Piers Morgan that Ted Cruz should be institutionalized. Talk about the pot calling the kettle batshit crazy. If Penn got any nuttier, he’d be a Snickers bar. Of course it would be uncool to point out to Penn that Chávez was no champion of the poor. Under his rule people became far poorer in Venezuela. And in the midst of an oil boom, Chávez engineered a murder boom. The murder rate in his country tripled during Chávez’s tyrannical tenure, hitting a high of 67 per 100,000 residents in 2011, compared with a murder rate of less than 5 per 100,000 in the United States (and that includes Baltimore). And about 10 or 20 less than the last Penn movie. Penn was joined, per usual, by director Oliver Stone, who said, solemnly, somewhere: “I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place.” He added: “Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chávez will live forever in history. “My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned.” This is from an adult, mind you. And no list of apologists for evil is complete without Michael Moore. This nugget comes from the Michigan Live website, which reports Moore praising Chávez in a feeble collection of Twitter messages, on the night the Venezuelan viper expired. Hugo Chávez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all. That made him dangerous. US

Finally, he looked sideways at Vaughn. “So. I guess this is probably a good time to mention that Isabelle is pregnant.” That got a small chuckle out of Vaughn. “I kind of figured that already. I’ve had my suspicions for a few weeks.” Simon nodded. “Isabelle wondered if you knew.” “You could’ve told me, Simon,” Vaughn said, not unkindly. “I get why you might not want Mom to know yet, but why not talk to me about it?” Simon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I guess I didn’t think you’d understand.” “I wouldn’t understand that you want to marry the woman who’s pregnant with your child? I think that’s a concept I can grasp.” “See, that’s just it.” Simon gestured emphatically. “I knew that’s how you would see it. That I’m marrying Isabelle because I got her pregnant. And I don’t want you, or Mom, or anyone else to think about Isabelle that way—that she’s the woman I had to marry, because it was the right thing to do. Because the truth is, I knew I wanted to marry Isabelle on our second date. She invited me up to her apartment that night, and I saw that she had the entire James Bond collection on Blu-ray. Naturally, being the Bond aficionado that I am, I threw out a little test question for her: ‘Who’s the best Bond?’” Vaughn scoffed. “Like there’s more than one possible answer to that.” “Exactly. Sean Connery’s a no-brainer, right? But get this—she says Daniel Craig.” Simon caught Vaughn’s horrified expression. “I know, right? So I’m thinking the date is over because clearly she’s either crazy or has seriously questionable taste, but then she starts going on and on about how Casino Royale is the first movie where Bond is touchable and human, and then we get into this big debate that lasts for nearly an hour. And as I’m sitting there on her couch, I keep thinking that I don’t know a single other person who would relentlessly argue, for an hour, that Daniel Craig is a better Bond than Sean Connery. She pulled out the DVDs and showed me movie clips and everything.” He smiled, as if remembering the moment. “And somewhere in there, it hit me. I thought to myself, I’m going to marry this woman.

Of course, no china--however intricate and inviting--was as seductive as my fiancé, my future husband, who continued to eat me alive with one glance from his icy-blue eyes. Who greeted me not at the door of his house when I arrived almost every night of the week, but at my car. Who welcomed me not with a pat on the arm or even a hug but with an all-enveloping, all-encompassing embrace. Whose good-night kisses began the moment I arrived, not hours later when it was time to go home. We were already playing house, what with my almost daily trips to the ranch and our five o’clock suppers and our lazy movie nights on his thirty-year-old leather couch, the same one his parents had bought when they were a newly married couple. We’d already watched enough movies together to last a lifetime. Giant with James Dean, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Reservoir Dogs, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, All Quiet on the Western Front, and, more than a handful of times, Gone With the Wind. I was continually surprised by the assortment of movies Marlboro Man loved to watch--his taste was surprisingly eclectic--and I loved discovering more and more about him through the VHS collection in his living room. He actually owned The Philadelphia Story. With Marlboro Man, surprises lurked around every corner. We were already a married couple--well, except for the whole “sleepover thing” and the fact that we hadn’t actually gotten hitched yet. We stayed in, like any married couple over the age of sixty, and continued to get to know everything about each other completely outside the realm of parties, dates, and gatherings. All of that was way too far away, anyway--a minimum hour-and-a-half drive to the nearest big city--and besides that, Marlboro Man was a fish out of water in a busy, crowded bar. As for me, I’d been there, done that--a thousand and one times. Going out and panting the town red was unnecessary and completely out of context for the kind of life we’d be building together. This was what we brought each other, I realized. He showed me a slower pace, and permission to be comfortable in the absence of exciting plans on the horizon. I gave him, I realized, something different. Different from the girls he’d dated before--girls who actually knew a thing or two about country life. Different from his mom, who’d also grown up on a ranch. Different from all of his female cousins, who knew how to saddle and ride and who were born with their boots on. As the youngest son in a family of three boys, maybe he looked forward to experiencing life with someone who’d see the country with fresh eyes. Someone who’d appreciate how miraculously countercultural, how strange and set apart it all really is. Someone who couldn’t ride to save her life. Who didn’t know north from south, or east from west. If that defined his criteria for a life partner, I was definitely the woman for the job.

A LITTLE BIT before Adeline made her unforgivable mistake, a billionaire named Sheryl Sandberg wrote a book called Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Sheryl Sandberg didn’t have much eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. In her book, Sheryl Sandberg proposed that women who weren’t billionaires could stop being treated like crap by men in the workplace if only they smiled more and worked harder and acted more like the men who treated them like crap. Billionaires were always giving advice to people who weren’t billionaires about how to become billionaires. It was almost always intolerable bullshit. SANDBERG BECAME A BILLIONAIRE by working for a company named Facebook. Facebook made its money through an Internet web and mobile platform which advertised cellphones, feminine hygiene products and breakfast cereals. This web and mobile platform was also a place where hundreds of millions of people offered up too much information about their personal lives. Facebook was invented by Mark Zuckerberg, who didn’t have much eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. What is your gender? asked Facebook. What is your relationship status? asked Facebook. What is your current city? asked Facebook. What is your name? asked Facebook. What are your favorite movies? asked Facebook. What is your favorite music? asked Facebook. What are your favorite books? asked Facebook. ADELINE’S FRIEND, the writer J. Karacehennem, whose last name was Turkish for Black Hell, had read an essay called “Generation Why?” by Zadie Smith, a British writer with a lot of eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. Zadie Smith’s essay pointed out that the questions Facebook asked of its users appeared to have been written by a 12-year-old. But these questions weren’t written by a 12-year-old. They were written by Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was a billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg was such a billionaire that he was the boss of other billionaires. He was Sheryl Sandberg’s boss. J. Karacehennem thought that he knew something about Facebook that Zadie Smith, in her decency, hadn’t imagined. “The thing is,” said J. Karacehennem, whose last name was Turkish for Black Hell, “that we’ve spent like, what, two or three hundred years wrestling with existentialism, which really is just a way of asking, Why are we on this planet? Why are people here? Why do we lead our pointless lives? All the best philosophical and novelistic minds have tried to answer these questions and all the best philosophical and novelistic minds have failed to produce a working answer. Facebook is amazing because finally we understand why we have hometowns and why we get into relationships and why we eat our stupid dinners and why we have names and why we own idiotic cars and why we try to impress our friends. Why are we here, why do we do all of these things? At last we can offer a solution. We are on Earth to make Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg richer. There is an actual, measurable point to our striving. I guess what I’m saying, really, is that there’s always hope.

Once, I was having lunch with the president of another movie studio, who told me that his biggest problem was not finding good people; it was finding good ideas. I remember being stunned when he said that—it seemed patently false to me, in part because I’d found the exact opposite to be true on Toy Story 2. I resolved to test whether what seemed a given to me was, in fact, a common belief. So for the next couple of years I made a habit, when giving talks, of posing the question to my audience: Which is more valuable, good ideas or good people? No matter whether I was talking to retired business executives or students, to high school principals or artists, when I asked for a show of hands, the audiences would be split 50-50. (Statisticians will tell you that when you get a perfect split like this, it doesn’t mean that half know the right answer—it means that they are all guessing, picking at random, as if flipping a coin.) People think so little about this that, in all these years, only one person in an audience has ever pointed out the false dichotomy. To me, the answer should be obvious: Ideas come from people.

Oh my God! You have Empire Records?” I grab the DVD and rush over to put it in the player. “You know this movie is cinema gold,” Jackson says as he brings over popcorn and settles into the couch. “This is the best movie ever!” I exclaim and snuggle into his side. “Okay. Before we start watching, if you could be anyone, who would you pick? I’d be Lucas. He’s hysterical.” I smile and grab the bowl, putting it on my lap. “I guess Joe. He’s the boss.” I laugh at his choice. Of course he’d pick the one who’s in charge. Joe is pretty badass, though. “I think you’d be a great Rex. Oh Rexy, you’re so sexy.” I smirk and push play as he scoffs.

The way in which art creates desire, I guess that’s everywhere. Is there anyone who hasn’t come out of a movie or a play or a concert filled with an unnameable hunger? … To stand in front of one of [Louis Sullivan’s] buildings and look up, or in front, say, of the facade of Notre Dame, is both to have a hunger satisfied that you maybe didn’t know you had, and also to have a new hunger awakened in you. I say “unnameable,” but there’s a certain kind of balance achieved in certain works of art that feels like satiety, a place to rest, and there are others that are like a tear in the cosmos, that open up something raw in us, wonder or terror or longing. I suppose that’s why people who write about aesthetics want to distinguish between the beautiful and sublime… Beauty sends out ripples, like a pebble tossed in a pond, and the ripples as they spread seem to evoke among other things a stirring of curiosity. The aesthetic effect of a Vermeer painting is a bit like that. Some paradox of stillness and motion. Desire appeased and awakened.

Do you fancy catching a movie at the Sturbridge Theater tonight? That new Robert Pattinson movie is showing,” I ask her, the phone cradled against my chest. “Definitely sign me up for that!” Ari replies, chuckling as I mock scowl. Her easy laugh warms my soul. “We’re in,” I tell Gil, arranging to meet him and his date in the diner later. “So, who is it this time?” Ari asks, resting her chin in her hands. “Anyone we know?” Considering I can count the girls on one hand who have enjoyed more than one date with Gil, I doubt it’ll be someone familiar. “I didn’t ask; guess we’ll find out soon enough.” “Five bucks says it’s a blonde,” Ari quips. “That’s one bet I’m not taking,” I admit, twirling a lock of her hair around my finger. “Gil’s penchant for blondes is world-renowned.

The entire problem is this victim mentality. When did that start? Life’s not turning out the way they said it would when you were in first grade. You’re not the president or a movie star or playing center field for the Yankees. Guess what? They lied! Move on! You come from incredible stock! Immigrants who chewed through it all and spit it out with thanks: Ellis Island, Manifest Destiny, the dust bowls, Normandy, and for what? For a society that now encourages everyone to choose up excuse teams: My attention span’s a little off, sometimes I’m nervous, sometimes I’m tired, insults make me sad, I was unfairly labeled slow in school when I really just didn’t want to do any work, a diet of super-size French fries turned me into a human zeppelin, your honor, so I need to be given a lot of money….

You’d think I’d have learned from all the movie villains who get beat while monologuing. Guess not.

I was so happy. I had changed lots of diapers in my twenty-two years and cared for lots of babies, but our Lily was ours, and to us, she was perfect and healthy. She was easy and quiet, and she slept really good. I always knew I was going to love being a mom, and I was right. I loved it. I could even take her to the movies, and she wouldn’t make a peep. Phil always says Lily was the first granddaughter who wasn’t afraid of him. And it was true. From the very first time they laid eyes on each other, baby Lily was a match for Phil. She just took to him. I guess it was the beard, and it was a good thing Jep had a hunting-season beard when she was born because she was used to it. She loved her Papaw Phil, and as soon as she was a few months old and could sit up, she’d sit in his lap and watch Fox News. Jep had always said he wanted his children to be around his family, especially his parents, so I made an effort to bring Lily down to Phil and Kay’s as often as possible. While Lily sat with Phil, I’d help Miss Kay with work or in the kitchen or just sit and visit. In the back of my mind, I still carried some of the fear and worry from my pregnancy. As she got closer to a year old, Jep and I noticed Lily hadn’t started talking yet, although she seemed to be normal and healthy in every other way. She was alert and sweet and smart, but she was quiet. Her eyes were big, and she watched everything going on around her. But she didn’t talk. In her second year, we got a little more worried because Lily still wasn’t talking. Developmentally, everything else was on track. She grew and ate solid good and crawled and walked, but still no words. We were concerned and afraid something might be wrong. Lily finally started talking when she was three, and she has turned out to be as smart as can be and does very well in school. There is nothing wrong with her. Lily is on her own timetable, and we had to wait patiently for her personality to emerge. I’m guessing her quiet personality came from her dad. I don’t know, but maybe I did all her talking for her, and she didn’t feel the need those first few years! Lily is twelve years old now. She’s still sweet and smart and quiet, and she still loves her family.

Suddenly Heller turned serious and stepped away from Lawson. He came straight at me—okay, what the hell was he doing?—and I about swallowed my tongue. Heller hugged me like a long-lost brother. “Thank you for protecting my mate,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re welcome. You mean the world to him, you know?” I left it at that because, really, what more was there to say? “Yeah, I do know. Now he needs to know.” Heller stepped back from me, then turned around to face Lawson. Then he went down on one knee. Lawson gasped, Remi thrust his fist in the air and yelled, “Yes,” and I rolled my eyes. Of course, that was more for show than anything. I did have a reputation to keep up “Lawson?” Heller held his hand out to Lawson, who took it. “You’re my everything, but I’ve told you that. My life would be… would be incomplete without you. You’re my mate—my one and only. What I haven’t done is tell you that… that… I love you, and I don’t know why I haven’t. I think… no, I know I fell in love with you the moment I looked into those beautiful gunmetal-gray eyes of yours at your shop.” “Jesus, Heller,” Lawson gasped. Heller pulled a small box out of his front pocket. “Shifters don’t marry… not like humans. Sometimes we have to shift with next to no warning, so we don’t wear jewelry.” “But… you don’t shift, and being part human, I guessed marriage means a lot to you. It does, right?” Lawson wiped his eyes. “Oh God, yes, it does. Especially since now gays can marry.” “Will… will you wear my ring? Will you… will you wear it so the whole world can see that you’re taken?” “Fuck.” Lawson dropped to his knees and threw his arms around Heller, sobbing into his neck. “Dammit, hellcat! I love you. I love you so much.” Lawson pulled back to look at Heller. “Yes, yes, I will wear your ring. Oh my God, you’re unbelievable! Put it on me!” Remi eased his arm around me and rested his head on my shoulder. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I turned my head and kissed his hair. “They worked hard for this.” “Yes, they did. How many times do you think he rehearsed this speech?” “At least ten.” After a passionate kiss I thought I might have to break up before they set the rug on fire, the four of us munched on goodies, drank a couple of beers, and spent what was left of the evening watching movies. Things were going exceptionally well. I couldn’t help but wonder when the other shoe would drop

The groom curses in the bathroom, a dropped metal thing. I have a sister now, too, I think. To Clover, I say, “When he what?” “He waited until I was on the phone,” she says. “I guess he thought that’d be a good way for him to.” “For him to what?” “For him to. He shot himself.” She describes the smell of burning, the smear of blood still on her. The groom draws the curtains, revealing the lake and sky. I clamber under the sheets, still naked. Thousands of miles above, a plane glides out from a bank of navy clouds. Clover says, the nurses. The name of the hospital. The plane reveals itself again. I think of the passengers, feet swinging over plastic seats, watching movie screens above the city’s grid. The conflation of tin and sky. For a moment, Danny is a small thing seen from thousands of miles above. I’m not certain I know him or the woman on the phone who is overcome with tears. I tell her I’ll come to the hospital and hang up. “One of my clients shot himself,” I say. “He’s at the hospital.” “He’s alive?” the groom says. “No,” I say. He frowns. “If he’s dead, he wouldn’t be at the hospital.” “He was still alive when they … Is this the fucking point?” “I don’t know why I’m arguing. I’m sorry.

I don’t guess you can outrun an explosion, right?” Sam asked doubtfully. Jack rolled his eyes and sighed his condescending geek sigh. “Seriously? Brianna runs in miles per hour. Explosions happen in feet per second. Don’t believe what you see in movies.” “Yeah, Sam,” Dekka said. “In the old days I always had Astrid around to humiliate me when I asked a stupid question,” Sam said. “It’s good to have Jack to take over that job.” He’d said it lightheartedly, but the mention of Astrid left an awkward hole in the conversation. Brianna said, “I can’t outrun an explosion, but I’ll tie the string around the wire.” She zipped over to the wire and zipped back holding the loose end. “Who gets to yank the string?” “She who ties the string pulls it,” Sam said. “But first—” BOOOOM! The containers, the sand, pieces of driftwood, bushes on the bluff all erupted in a fireball. Sam felt a blast of heat on his face. His ears rang. His eyes scrunched on sand. Debris seemed to take a long time to fall back down to earth. In the eventual silence Sam said, “I was going to say first we should all lie flat so we didn’t get blown up. But I guess that was good, too, Breeze.

Hulking piece of rust,” she grumbled, then gave it a little pat on the wheel well as she scooted out between her truck and Hannah’s car. “Can’t let the car gods hear you dis their minions,” she said when she caught Cooper’s amused look. “They’ll strand you in the desert as sure as look at you. Besides, she might be a hulking piece of rusted metal but she’s my hulking piece.” She stopped when she reached her sister and gave her a one-armed hug. “And to what do I owe this pleasure? Cross-examining my afternoon date, are we?” “Maybe,” Hannah said, hugging her back. “Oh, good.” Kerry grinned, rubbing her hands together. “What did you learn?” “Hey, now,” Cooper said, chuckling. “What makes you think I’d give anything up?” “Oh, she’s good,” Kerry told him. “She once talked a tribal chief in Papua New Guinea, out of marrying me to his youngest son.” Cooper looked at Hannah, who just raised an arched brow but didn’t refute the statement. “Well, then, I suppose I’m even more in your debt,” he told Kerry’s oldest sister. “Unless of course the tribe believes in polygamy.” Kerry looked affronted. “You’d share me? Well, well, good to know.” She folded her arms. “So glad we’re having this little chat.” “Oh, no, Starfish, no such luck. You’d be stuck making do with only me. You see, I know a guy who could fly us out of there on his helicopter, and I’m guessing your erstwhile tribal spouse wouldn’t go anywhere near one of those flying birds. I’d spirit you off and--” “And leave my poor first husband brokenhearted and alone? Do I get a say in this?” She looked to her sister. “You’re drawing up my pre-nup, right?” Cooper brightened and clapped his hands together, which earned him an arched brow from Kerry. “Well, while I’m not too thrilled about your attachment to Number One, speaking as Number Two, I will say I’m happy to hear we’re in the negotiation phase.” “Husband Number One is a lot younger,” she said consideringly. “And while he doesn’t have as many head of cattle as you do, he does come with an entire village, and if something happens to his other six brothers, he’ll be chief one day.” She smiled sweetly. “Just saying.” Cooper flashed her a smile that might have been a little too private with her sister standing right there, but what the hell. “Keep in mind, Number Twos traditionally try harder. So I have that going for me.” Hannah looked from Cooper to Kerry, then at both of them, before finally looking at Kerry. “Seriously, marry him before he wises up.” “Hey,” Kerry replied, mock wounded. “And why do you say that?” “You speak the same language.” “Says the woman who communicates with her husband using old movie quotes that nobody gets but the two of you.” Hannah smiled, really smiled, and it transformed her often more serious expression into something truly radiant. “Yes, that’s exactly who’s saying that.” She looked at Cooper. “I have a feeling you and Calder will become fast friends.” “Thank you,” Cooper said, “for both sentiments.

So,” she asks, “did we decide on a movie?” She settles up against me, and my arm goes naturally around her. “I was thinking Braveheart.” “Ugh. What is it with that movie? Why are all men addicted to it?” “Ah, the same reason women are obsessed with the freaking Notebook. That is what you were going to suggest, right?” She smiles slyly, and I know I guessed right. “The Notebook is romantic.” “It’s fucking gay.” She hits me in the face with the “perfect” pillow. “It’s sweet.” “It’s nauseating. I have friends who are flaming homosexuals—and that movie is too gay for them.

Ever seen a cow milked by hand in the movies?” he asked. “Certainly,” said Ferdy. “Then I guess you know all you need to,” said Ben with a wink at the other cubs. “Go on, son. Git!” Ferdy sat down on the little stool behind Old Bess and placed the bucket under her bulging udder. He grasped two nipples and pulled gently. Nothing happened. “Better pull a little harder, son,” Ben advised. Ferdy tugged harder. But all that happened was that Old Bess looked back at Ferdy. “Uh-oh,” said Lizzy, who had a way with animals. “She looks mad.” Just then Old Bess lifted a hind leg and kicked the stool right out from under Ferdy. Ferdy fell forward and landed with his head in the bucket. “You’re sure havin’ your problems with buckets this morning, son,” said Farmer Ben. “I doubt it was my fault,” said Ferdy icily. “Old Bess seems to be working no better than her milking machine.” “We’ll see about that,” said Farmer Ben. He took a seat on the stool and reached for Old Bess’s udder. Within minutes he had a full pail of fresh milk. “I’ll bet Ferdy’s had enough for one day, cubs,” said Farmer Ben. “We should all thank him for being such a good sport. And a good teacher. You can learn a lot by seeing how not to do things, you know.

Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to communicate with its people in the field. They had come from MI6, which, for the first two years of SOE’s existence, had controlled its wireless circuits and provided its sets and coding. Marks was dismayed by the simplicity of the codes, which were based on classic English poems by Shakespeare and others that were “so familiar that an educated German was quite capable of recognizing them and guessing the cipher.” To replace them, he wrote poems of his own, ranging from ribald verses to tender love poems. He gave one of the latter, entitled “The Life That I Have,” to a twenty-one-year-old agent named Violette Szabo, who, after being parachuted into France in 1942, was eventually captured, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo. It read: The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours. The love that I have Of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours. A sleep I shall have A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours. Since then, the poem has developed a life of its own. It has been used in a movie about Szabo’s life, found in poetry anthologies, reprinted on a 9/11 victims’ website, and recited by Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky at their wedding in 2010. “Every code,” Marks would later say, “has a human face.

One by one the Essence Awards honorees were called onto the stage. First went civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, then movie director Spike Lee, followed by comedian Eddie Murphy, and then Dr. Benjamin S. Carson. Ben stood and walked forward to the stage. It was one of the most surreal moments of his life. He wondered how he belonged in the same category as those around him on the stage. It was hard for him to imagine that he, a pediatric neurosurgeon, was being publicly honored along with the most recognizable African American men and women in the country. As he stood onstage, staring out at the crowd, Ben thought about the path his life had taken. Who could have guessed that he, a poor black boy from a single-parent home in Detroit, would end up a brain surgeon? Certainly not those who had considered him the class dummy back in elementary school. Here he was, not just a brain surgeon, but a brain surgeon being honored for the work he had undertaken—experimental surgeries that gave children a chance at life.

Part Two: When St. Kari of the Blade Met Darth Vader, Star Wars Dark Lord of the Sith  (Earlier, the Emperor commanded Lord Vader to make contact . . . “I have felt a non-tremor in the Nether-Force” “I have not, my master.” “Yes, well, that is why I’m ‘the Emp’ and you are not . . . Um, we have a new enemy, the non-entity known as Blade Kári. She’s running around all over the place gunning for that brat kid of yours.” “Hmm. Interesting,” tight-lipped Darth. “Anyway, I–hey, how can all this mish-mash be?” “Search your feelings, Lord Vader” the Emperor solemnized. “If you feel nothing as usual, you know it to be true or false. By now your guess is as good as mine with this Force stuff.” “Damn!–If you say so,” Vader said smacking his hand. “If she could be turned she would make a powerful ally.” “Yesss . . . can it be done? Bring the Valkyrie creature to me. See to it personally, Lord Vader. The more she is loose the more of a train wreck waiting to happen she becomes to us. Besides, it will break up the monotony until Bingo Wednesday night.” “Okay. She will join us or die–again and again and again–until we all get it right. “Now, what about my son?” grumbed Vader deeply. “Why fish for guppies when you can land a Megalodon? Go on. Get out of here. You Annoy me.” “Yes, my Mahhster . . . ”). back to the action . . . “—Oh yeah? Who is he, this Vader person? Someone I should meet?” Kari percolated. Luke mulled. “No. He is evil and very powerful. A ȿith lord.” “A Scythian, eh? Humm.—for a minute there, you had me worried. “Look—there he is!” Luke shouted scrunching down and pulling the girl besides him. Vader stwalked down the landing craft’s platform decked in his usual evil attire looking at the pile of messy clones. “He doesn’t look so tough’st to me. Pretty trippy wardrobe though. Maybe that is why he is evil. Clothes do that, costuming up n’ all. I think I’ll go down and see him.” Kari launched off to meet him. Luke trying to pull her back, she running up to the battle line strewn with dead clones. “Hey Darth’st.” “Did you do all this? Hmmph. The Force is with you, young Blade Kári, but you are not a Valkyrie yet.” “Sez ‘st who? You’st? Do not be so blamed melodramatic. This ’tain’t no movie ʎ’know’st, well leastways, not yet. I shall have you know I am a charter member of your friendly neighborhood Valkyrie club and my dues are so in.” Vader ignited his red lightsaber (he was not one for small talk). “Where can I get one of those, she asked Vader, pointing to his glowing blade of laser evil. Do they come in assorted colors? I want one!” she yelled back at Luke. Vader struck savagely at the girl, she mildly pirouetting on her heels to evade the cut then giggling, diminutively popped him squarely in his breather-chest contraption bugging him. Again, he struck, the blade harmlessly passing through her. “Impressive, most impressive. And you say you can’t get a date?” “Best take it easy Sith-meister. You’re riling me.” Luke’s eyes bulged. He could not believe it, remembering his own stupid head words to Yoda, his spry little green master. Vader paused, breathing heavily as was typical of him like he was a 20-pack a day smoker. “Your destiny lies with me, young Kári. Look here, if you really want one of these red glow in the Nether dark cutters, come with me.” “Honestly?” Luke nodded his head back and forth as if agreeing with himself. Where had he heard that before . . . ? The kid was going to be nothing but trouble from here on out he foresaw. end stay tuned for part iii  

And then I want a big hug from all of you while we watch that Disney movie with that person who’s stuck working and working and working, and then they realise they can live out their dreams instead.” “Cinderella?” Mateo guessed and I shook my head with a frown. “You know the one. Where they get to go out at night doing all the things they really want to do, but they can’t tell anyone.” “The Incredibles?” Mateo guessed again. “Nooo.” I threw my head back against the cushion behind me with a huff. “Oh, you mean American Psycho,” Niall realised and I perked up. “Yes! That one. With the stabby man living his dreams,” I said with a grin.

Kim Dokja x Hansooyoung PART 1 [I shall kill you, Yoo Joonghyuk.] ~ Kim Dokja pg 4110 46. ⸢(Looks like you still don't know how it works. The heroine loses her consciousness, her hand falling away. And the male hero awakens! You see, in all the movies I've seen so far…) pg 4112 47. These idiots, I even died so that you two could talk to each other, but this…' She figured that she really needed to give these two men a harsh earful when she arrived there. But, when she pushed past the bushes and stepped forward, the ensuing spectacle freaked her out in a rather grand manner. Kwa-aaang!! Bang!!! Yoo Joonghyuk was mercilessly slamming his sword down on Kim Dokja, currently sprawled out on the ground. "Hey!! You crazy son of a bitch!!" pg 4125 48. There were plenty of things she wanted to ask, but she chose not to. Instead, she poked Kim Dokja's cheek and spoke up. "Still, this guy looks like he got completely fooled, doesn't he." "Looks that way." "How did it go?" "He went crazy and attacked me." Han Sooyoung smirked and lightly pinched Kim Dokja's cheek as if she was proud of him. pg 4127 49. the events of her dying at Yoo Joonghyuk's sword, me fighting against him, and then, passing out from his attack, and finally, sharing a conversation with Yoo Sangah inside the Library… Han Sooyoung approached the bed before I noticed it and pinched my cheek. "In any case, Kim Dokja. You can be really adorable sometimes." pg 4144 50. The moment Han Sooyoung's fist bumped into mine, she was completely enveloped in bright light. As I watched her figure disappear, I became aware once more that she had become my companion for real. pg 4165 51. ⸢And…⸥ My heart began powerfully pounding away. ⸢The woman that I used to love.⸥ pg 4189 52. Her emotionless eyes; the beauty spot just below one of them; and her lips that always mocked me for fun, now arching up in a smooth line. "Proceed with the execution pg 4191 53. "But, should you be doing something like that? She's originally your bride, isn't she?" "Correction. She was supposed to be one. The throne was usurped on the first day of the wedding, however." Oh, I see. So, it's that sort of development? I felt just a bit relieved now. Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk as a couple? hadn't allowed any dating at the workplace yet, so hell no. pg 4202 54. ⸢By the time you're reading this book, I…⸥ I steeled my heart and read the next line of the text. ⸢…I'd still be living a pretty good life, I guess. Hahah, were you scared?⸥ This idiot… pg 4212 55. The following words were eerily similar to a certain body of text that I was familiar with. ⸢The you reading this story will definitely make it out of here alive.⸥ Han Sooyoung's afterwords came to an end there. For the longest time, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the full-stop at the end of the sentencepg4216 56. "Looks like the company's internal rules need to be changed somewhat…" pg 4234 57. She spoke in a fed-up tone of voice. And then, issued an order to me. "Marry me, Ricardo Von Kaizenix." pg 4244 58. "I didn't want to extend her 50 years by even one minute if I could help it." I was being serious here. The moment I arrived in this world and realized that Han Sooyoung had to spend 50 years here, I just couldn't escape from this one overwhelming emotion. Someone was sacrificed again because of me. Han Sooyoung who had to endure the time frame of 50 years – could she still maintain a normal, functioning mind? Was she able to maintain the ego of the Han Sooyoung that I know of?pg4254 59. Her palm smacked me in the back of the head again. God damn it, this punk… "The third method, 'Romance'." "And its contents are?" "Marry Yuri di Aristel." "And just what did you choose?" "The third method?" "And are we currently married?" "Nope." "And why the hell not?!" pg 4256

Naturally, we even made snow angels in the backyard as we stumbled around, and passed out. No one cared what we did really, thus far that was the fun of it all. Oh, and Kenneth was just the boy that only wanted one thing from Jenny. He had no personality to speak of… he would hit on me all the time, and sometimes he would get it from me too, or I would be out of the group by her if he said I was the one that wanted it from him. We could break widows out of old buildings and homes, and who would stop us. Sure, we got chased by the cops, yet that was the fun of it too. There is nothing else for us to do. I remember Maddie leaving her handprints in the wet mud, Jenny her butt, and some of her lady-ness, when the town thought it was time for new sidewalks. Yet we all did, something that would last forever, we thought. Maddie drew a few other things too. You can get the picture! All inappropriate… all there for life. She was just crazy like that, like squatting down pissing, and doing number two in the old man Jackups yard. She has more balls than most guys… I knew. Old man Jackups called us, ‘Mindless slutty hooligans’ So that was payback. At the time- I thought like what is wrong with that, we're just having some fun here… your old windbag, like go and sit on your cane! You know what I mean… I think? I remember being so smashed at my sweet sixteen too, that I don’t even remember it. Yet that is what having a good time was all about, so they say. Bumping and grinding on all the boys with loud music. And as the twinkling lights shine on your skin, that lights the way up to your bedroom. You know that your puffy dress is going to be pushed up a couple of times on that night. I just don’t remember how many times it was, and I didn’t remember who it was with, I am not even sure if I know them at all… all of them or not. All I know is I did it all and was happy to do whatever they asked me to do. But- but I thought I was having the time of my life. I was the birthday girl that had the rosiest pink lipstick on most boys at the party. I thought it was such a horror. In my mind at the time, I thought that I high-jacked the rainbow, and crashed into a pot of gold! All the girls my age did it, yet I was the best at it! I recall the time Liv and I went trick or treating. I was dressed as Hermione from the Harry Potter movies. Liv was a sexy witch! With the pointed hat. So, original…! That is what I told her. That was the night we scared the pants off of Ray in the not-so-scary haunted house. And before you ask, he was dressed as Harry. So, I wanted to play with his wand, that's why I dressed the way I did at the time. Liv was one of those good friends… I thought, which would tell everyone what you all did the day after, to all the girls at the lunch table. She can text faster than anyone I know. Anyways… we jumped out at him, and he nearly craps his nicely pressed pants. I am sure there was a skid mark on his tighty- whities or something. Yet he did yack on Liv’s chest, and that was hilarious to me. She was dancing around, and flapping her hands doing the funky chicken while yelling, ‘Ou- ou- ou- wah!’ As I dibble over in lather, I guess it was funnier when it doesn’t happen to you too many times.

Eat- Yō Sandwich (Lunch) It is a foot long; Ha- better than six inches, said Maddie. Karly- Suck on your meatballs… ‘You should know you’ve done both.’ Some girl down the table- said. Let’s talk about books, said Olivia. God just shot me in the head, so I can die, ha- hey see the sped? Nice- book’s- Maddie- ha! Karly- I think movies like Twilight freaking suck, (Throwing both middle fingers in the air making a skilling face.) The sporting actress made fame, what it is. Look at her and the look at that, what is- that, I love Anna Kendrick? Teach walking by saying that a mother-week Barns. Liv- I think she would have made a better Bella, than the girl with no personality, yet that’s the book I read that thing and it was painful. I guess that my assignment in life is over my Karly kiss my ass where it is brown and holy! And that another one, sure it is… Suck my clit. No! Yes, you want to! (Sexy eyes) That's it- you're expelled- Good now I can party and have some fun sleeping and not doing this crap, so you're going to punish me by not being here, freak yeah! The towing sickness of a teacher whose name is Mr. Abdèlaziz Okay smart-ie, in-school suspension, then right. Karly- Freaking-, ho-bag, psycho, b*tch, p*ssy-tart- cunt! Under her breath. (She gets taken out by her hair, by the officer what’s his name, roughly, I might add.) Like who paints a room all black, and faces the desks at the wall, where you could only piss two times… no air to speak of and some fat ass smelling like crap farting up and down the five by thirdly long skinny room, next to you is what… I got six out of seven freaking hours, all week I might add. ~*~ (Flashback) I love bands that are not cool so what do you do here? Freak yeah, at least I made it as one of our dumb ho’s… in a short skirt that shows nothing under it, to think I made it, wow good to think… you think I am good enough to be the same look, and size or whatever, yet you can’t say the N-word or a knotty little swore ward… Yet- yet- teachers can call me every name you can think of… in the urban book of crap, like I cannot even wear a tank… without a bra in the halls, yet, this girl can… do you see all the bouncing, and nipples pointing, at you, I sure do?

The Welsh are swine,” said the one-legged man in reply to a question from his son. “Absolute swine. The English are swine, too, but not as bad as the Welsh. Though really they’re the same, but they make an effort not to seem it, and since they know how to pretend, they succeed. The Scots are bigger swine than the English and only a little better than the Welsh. The French are as bad as the Scots. The Italians are little swine. Little swine ready and willing to gobble up their own swine mother. The same can be said of the Austrians: swine, swine, swine. Never trust a Hungarian. Never trust a Bohemian. They’ll lick your hand while they devour your little finger. Never trust a Jew: he’ll eat your thumb and leave your hand covered in slobber. The Bavarians are also swine. When you talk to a Bavarian, son, make sure you keep your belt fastened tight. Better not to talk to Rhinelanders at all: before the cock crows they’ll try to saw off your leg. The Poles look like chickens, but pluck four feathers and you’ll see they’ve got the skin of swine. Same with the Russians. They look like starving dogs but they’re really starving swine, swine that’ll eat anyone, without a second thought, without the slightest remorse. The Serbs are the same as the Russians, but miniature. They’re like swine disguised as Chihuahuas. Chihuahuas are tiny dogs, the size of a sparrow, that live in the north of Mexico and are seen in some American movies. Americans are swine, of course. And Canadians are big ruthless swine, although the worst swine from Canada are the French-Canadians, just as the worst swine from America are the Irish-American swine. The Turks are no better. They’re sodomite swine, like the Saxons and the Westphalians. All I can say about the Greeks is that they’re the same as the Turks: bald, sodomitic swine. The only people who aren’t swine are the Prussians. But Prussia no longer exists. Where is Prussia? Do you see it? I don’t. Sometimes I imagine that while I was in the hospital, that filthy swine hospital, there was a mass migration of Prussians to some faraway place. Sometimes I go out to the rocks and gaze at the Baltic and try to guess where the Prussian ships sailed. Sweden? Norway? Finland? Not on your life: those are swine lands. Where, then? Iceland, Greenland? I try but I can’t make it out. Where are the Prussians, then? I climb up on the rocks and search for them on the gray horizon. A churning gray like pus. And I don’t mean once a year. Once a month! Every two weeks! But I never see them, I can never guess what point on the horizon they set sail to. All I see is you, your head in the waves as they wash back and forth, and then I have a seat on a rock and for a long time I don’t move, watching you, as if I’ve become another rock, and even though sometimes I lose sight of you, or your head comes up far away from where you went under, I’m never afraid, because I know you’ll come up again, there’s no danger in the water for you. Sometimes I actually fall asleep, sitting on a rock, and when I wake up I’m so cold I don’t so much as look up to make sure you’re still there. What do I do then? Why, I get up and come back to town, teeth chattering. And as I turn down the first streets I start to sing so that the neighbors tell themselves I’ve been out drinking down at Krebs’s.

I guess I was sort of like a person who has seen a really great movie or read a really great book and then ran around trying to get his friends to read it. You're bursting to let everyone know that they should take some time to enrich their lives. Why I think their lives will be enriched if they listen to me, I don't know.

But I can assume he wasn’t hugged a whole lot. His family didn’t pray before dinner. They didn’t go camping or snuggle together on the couch for movie night. I can assume his father never helped him with his algebra homework. I can guess that at least once, someone forgot to pick him up from school. I can guess that at some point in his life, no one was paying attention to what he watched on TV. And I can guess that he’s been smacked across the face by someone who should’ve known better, someone he trusted.

What…the…” I breathed. “You were married to…” I blinked. “Wait,” I said to my mother, “you were married?” “To your father,” my mother returned. “Until he died.” “Then does that mean…” I blinked again, and turned to Reed, who gave me a shrug and a shake of the head. “You’re my brother?” Reed nodded. “Half, anyway.” Kat spoke up, drawing my attention along with everyone else’s. “What…the hell is going on here? Can I go yet?” “Stay where you are, Kitten,” my mother snapped at her. “My name is Kat!” A withering glare from my mother caused Kat to flinch. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, chastened. “So Sienna and this dude are brother and sister?” Clary piped up from behind me. “Cuz I thought I caught ro-mantic tension between them. Heh,” he guffawed. “Guess it’s more like BRO-mantic tension!” He burst out in uncontrolled laughter which was echoed by no one. “What?” He turned to Bastian. “Roberto, that is funny! Come on!” I turned to Reed. “All this time you’ve been playing Leia to my Luke and you never told me?” He frowned. “What? I’m totally Luke. You’re the girl. Can you make objects move through the air?” He raised his finger and I felt a gust of wind blow my hair. “No? I’m Luke. You’re Leia. Get it straight.” “So who’s Han Solo?” Clary asked seriously. “And Darth Vader?” “I’m going to kill every last one of you pathetic geeks,” my mother said. “And I’m not even going to be nice about it. I’m going to just start draining souls. Will you please stop with the moronic Star Wars references? The movies came out in the 1970s. Most of you weren’t even born then. Move on with your lives.

There was a small, strange moment during which I had this feeling that someone was filming me, which was ridiculous, but it was that specific—”there’s a camera on me”—and then some hard ancient pushed-down thing, a thing I’d felt or thought or feared a long time ago, something I’d since managed to sheathe in an imaginary scabbard inside myself, erupted through its casing like a bursting cyst. I had to really struggle to recover. Something was dislodging itself, as from a cavern inside my body or brain, and this situation seemed so divorced from waking reality that my own dimensions lost their power to persuade. I craned my great head and saw all that yellow-brown plastic catch the light, little pills glinting like ammunition, and then my brain went to work, juggling and generating several internal voices at once: someone’s filming this; this isn’t real; whoever Sean is, it’s not who I think he is; all the details I think I know about things are lies; somebody is trying to see what I’ll do when I run across these bottles; this is a test but there won’t be any grade later; the tape is rolling but I’m never going to see the tape. It is a terrible thing to feel trapped within a movie whose plot twists are senseless. This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen. I looked away; I looked away. Held myself steady for a second and then got back to the work of the cleaning, shaking free of the crazy feelings, and I felt the corners of my mouth, half smiling. Most people can clean their bathroom cabinets without waking up any traumatic memories. Not me, not yet, I guess. But as Dave the art therapist told me once when he found me sulking: it’s not so bad to be special. My journey, he said, was longer and slower. He looked me in the eyes, which impressed me, and told me that my good fortune was to learn what special really meant.

No matter how highly placed they were, they were still officials, their views were well established and well known, famous. It could have rained frogs over Tan Son Nhut and they wouldn’t have been upset; Cam Ranh Bay could have dropped into the South China Sea and they would have found some way to make it sound good for you; the Bo Doi Division (Ho’s Own) could have marched by the American embassy and they would have characterized it as “desperate”—what did even the reporters closest to the Mission Council ever find to write about when they’d finished their interviews? (My own interview with General Westmoreland had been hopelessly awkward. He’d noticed that I was accredited to Esquire and asked me if I planned to be doing “humoristical” pieces. Beyond that, very little was really said. I came away feeling as though I’d just had a conversation with a man who touches a chair and says, “This is a chair,” points to a desk and says, “This is a desk.” I couldn’t think of anything to ask him, and the interview didn’t happen.) I honestly wanted to know what the form was for those interviews, but some of the reporters I’d ask would get very officious, saying something about “Command postures,” and look at me as though I was insane. It was probably the kind of look that I gave one of them when he asked me once what I found to talk about with the grunts all the time, expecting me to confide (I think) that I found them as boring as he did. And just-like-in-the-movies, there were a lot of correspondents who did their work, met their deadlines, filled the most preposterous assignments the best they could and withdrew, watching the war and all its hideous secrets, earning their cynicism the hard way and turning their self-contempt back out again in laughter. If New York wanted to know how the troops felt about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, they’d go out and get it. (“Would you have voted for him?” “Yeah, he was a real good man, a real good man. He was, uh, young.” “Who will you vote for now?” “Wallace, I guess.”) They’d even gather troop reflections on the choice of Paris as the site of the peace talks. (“Paris? I dunno, sure, why not? I mean, they ain’t gonna hold ’em in Hanoi, now are they?”), but they’d know how funny that was, how wasteful, how profane. They knew that, no matter how honestly they worked, their best work would somehow be lost in the wash of news, all the facts, all the Vietnam stories. Conventional journalism could no more reveal this war than conventional firepower could win it, all it could do was take the most profound event of the American decade and turn it into a communications pudding, taking its most obvious, undeniable history and making it into a secret history. And the very best correspondents knew even more than that.

I left you two more pieces. You can’t be full.” I glanced over at him. “You mean you didn’t stop eating because you were full?” He shook his head. “No, I was being considerate. I’m never full.” I leaned back on the sofa. “Eat all you want. I’m done.” He didn’t lean forward to grab another slice like I had expected him to. Instead his attention stayed on me. “Why did you invite me here tonight, Ash?” My face flushed. Why had I asked him to come? Answering that question wasn’t easy. Since he’d walked in the door, I’d been acting ridiculous. I never seemed to be at a loss for things to say to Sawyer. Beau rattled me. Now he was being bored to death by the preacher’s daughter when he could be spending his evening with his sexy, hot girlfriend, doing all those things I knew nothing about. I was depriving him of an exciting night. The idea that he’d come tonight to entertain me for his cousin’s sake made me feel awful. He’d been doing this as a charity, and I couldn’t even make it interesting for him. Well, at least I’d fed him. “I’m sorry. I guess I just didn’t want to be alone, but I’m okay. You can go. I know this is dull compared to your normal activities.” I managed a weak smile. His frown deepened as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. “Being with you isn’t dull. You just seem uncomfortable. If you want me to leave, I will. I have a feeling you’re rethinking the having me over thing.” I sighed and let out a small laugh. “No. I want you to stay. I’ve just never had any guy over here but Sawyer, and even then my parents were here. I’m nervous. It’s not that I don’t want you here.” “Why do I make you nervous?” he asked, watching me. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Hmm, you’re wrong, by the way,” he replied, grinning. “What?” “You’ve had other guys here. I use to come here often. Your room still looks the same.” I smiled. He was right. I just needed to remember this was the same boy who used to lie on my bed with me and watch movies. He closed the space between us and relaxed as he stretched his arm along the back of the sofa. “I don’t bite, Ash. It’s just me. Promise. Come here and see.” I studied the crook of his arm; the idea of snuggling up against him was extremely tempting. But I didn’t think he had that in mind. So instead I leaned back on the couch, careful not to touch him. His hand didn’t come around me and pull me closer. It remained on the back of the couch, and I hated that I was disappointed. “Relax and watch the movie,” he said in a soft voice I’d never heard him use before. It made me feel warm and safe.

I read voraciously as a kid. And one day, I realized that in books, everything is possible." Megan pictured in her mind the library beneath them, its rows upon rows of books "You know how science fiction movies have mad scientists who keep endless jars of brains in some secret back room? Well, if you think about it, what you have down there--" she inclined her head in the direction of the library "--is a room full of brains. Every book is someone's brain. When I read a book, I'm basically reading someone's mind. Not their thoughts exactly, but you get an idea of their worldview, or at the very least, you get an idea of their understanding of humans. When I was a kid, it felt like that helped. I could understand the characters in books because I knew their motives. Books helped me figure people out." She laughed. "I guess. Or maybe they're just a good escape. But, I mean, libraries include everything we can think of in the universe. All possibilities. If someone has imagined it, it's in a library. That's pretty amazing.

You know that friend who’s always planning something, and gets a little too enthusiastic? That would probably be me. I love birthday parties because there’s cake, any excuse to wear a costume, and movies that I can’t guess the end to. I’m looking for someone who lives to laugh, who wants the wild, chaotic mess that comes with falling in love, and someone who could sit on the cliffs at Hendry’s Beach and listen to the crashing surf until the sun has slipped into the ocean.