Letter Jacket Quotes

We can go steady and you can wear my letterman jacket.” “Ooooh, maybe,” she said playfully. “What letter is on it?” “No letter, just a picture of a cock.” She snorted. “Of course there is.” “It's a rooster, you pervert.” She eyed me dryly. “Oh yeah? Why a rooster?” “It symbolizes my cock. Can't love me without loving cock.

If you’re not gratified, you should be,” he told her as he tucked the letter back in the breast pocket of his jacket. “All the other members of my staff were running around like panicked rabbits without you.” “But not you, I am sure.” “I was too astonished to panic.

Day by day his sister grew Paler with the wound She could not see or touch or feel, as I dressed it Each day with her blue Breton jacket. - from Life After Death

But inside your sob-sodden Kleenex And your Saturday night panics, Under your hair done this way and that way, Behind what looked like rebounds And the cascade of cries diminuendo, You were undeflected. You were gold-jacketed, solid silver, Nickel-tipped. Trajectory perfect As through ether.

I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity, let’s say a conflagration, a fire, there are always three principle options. 1. Run away, as far away and as fast as you can and let those who cannot run burn. 2. Write a very angry letter to the editor of your paper demanding that the responsible people be removed from office with disgrace. Or, for that matter, launch a demonstration. 3. Bring a bucket of water and throw it on the fire, and if you don’t have a bucket, bring a glass, and if you don’t have a glass, use a teaspoon, everyone has a teaspoon. And yes, I know a teaspoon is little and the fire is huge but there are millions of us and each one of us has a teaspoon. Now I would like to establish the Order of the Teaspoon. People who share my attitude, not the run away attitude, or the letter attitude, but the teaspoon attitude – I would like them to walk around wearing a little teaspoon on the lapel of their jackets, so that we know that we are in the same movement, in the same brotherhood, in the same order, The Order of the Teaspoon.

So you're okay with me being your boyfriend? I'll treat you real nice. We can go steady and you can wear my letterman jacket." "Ooooh maybe," she said playfully. "What letter is on it?" "No letter, just a picture of a cock." She snorted. "Of course there is." "It's a rooster, you pervert." She eyed me dryly. "Oh yeah? Why a rooster?" "It symbolizes my cock. Can't love me without loving my cock.

I heard Coach Downs never started freshman," he told us. "Well that's not how it is with me. I play the best players, period. If you're a junior with three letters on your jacket, and you shave twice a day, and some smooth-faced freshman whips your ass in practice, then your collecting splinters while he's playing. Understood? Coach Carlson

No, I promised him I wouldn’t fight a giant.” “So you obey the letter of the law and not the spirit,” she said. “Yes.” My teeth finally stopped chattering. I loved my turtleneck. I loved my jacket. I loved my boots. Mmm, wonderful warm boots. “How come when I do that, you chew me out?” “Because you don’t do it well enough to get away with it.” Julie blinked. “What kind of move was that, at the end?” “It’s from Escrima, a Filipino martial art. I’ll show you when we get a minute, but you will have to practice, because it has to be done really fast for it to work.

In the real world, in the grand scheme of life, this year is going to count for exactly nothing. These are the friendships that don't last and the choices that don't count. All those things we freak out about now, like who's going to be class president and are we going to win the game this weekend- there's going to be a time when we can't remember caring about them. In exactly three hundred and sixty five days from right now, wearing your letter jacket will make you look like the lamest of losers.

Eddie Carroll had just come in from outside, and read Noonan's letter standing in the mudroom. He flipped to the beginning of the story. He stood reading for almost five minutes before noticing he was uncomfortably warm. He tossed his jacket at a hook and wandered into the kitchen. He sat for a while on the stairs to the second floor, turning through the pages. Then he was stretched on the couch in his office, head on a pile of books, reading in a slant of late October light, with no memory of how he had got there. He rushed through to the ending, then sat up, in the grip of a strange, bounding exuberance. He thought it was possibly the rudest, most awful thing he had ever read, and in his case that was saying something. He had waded through the rude and awful for most of his professional life, and in those fly-blown and diseased literary swamps had discovered flowers of unspeakable beauty, of which he was sure this was one. It was cruel and perverse and he had to have it. He turned to the beginning and started reading again. ("Best New Horror")

Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time. Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp. Jackets. People who left took jackets because they’d been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way. They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket. Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters.

Jamie Raskin, the brilliant and perpetually disheveled Maryland Democrat, asked me about internet conspiracies that alleged I was beaten by the mob because I was mistaken for an Antifa agitator. I stifled a smile. "Well, I was in full uniform. I was wearing my uniform shirt adorned with the Metropolitan Police Department's patch. I had my badge on until somebody ripped it off my chest." I could have added that I also wore a jacket with the words," METROPOLITAN POLICE" stenciled across the back and a helmet emblazoned with the letters "MPDC." Keeping a straight face, I told Raskin, "I do not believe I was mistaken for a member of Antifa.

Before she could react to this unexpected and disturbing development, there came a wordless howl of joy from the door and the sight of unflappable Charlie hurling herself across the room to bury her face in her brother's jacket. Liam returned her embrace with enthusiasm, only detaching himself to wink conspiratorially at Lulu..

Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English. The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake. So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate. Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question. Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it." For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com

Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, “Dear God, Meg, you’re glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That’s so adorable.” Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother.

No one else I knew was half something. For so long, I felt like two halves. And then my father died, and I felt like I was one-half my mother and one-half lost. A half that I feel so torn from, so incomplete without. But looking at this picture now, the three of us together in 1986, me in overalls, my father in a polo, my mother in a denim jacket, we look like we belong together. I don’t look like I am half of one thing and half of another but rather one whole thing, theirs. Loved. I miss my dad. I miss him all the time. But it’s moments like this, when I’m on the precipice of finally doing work that might just expand my heart, that I wish I could at least send him a letter, telling him what I’m doing. And I wish that he could send me one back. I already know what he would write. Something like “I’m proud of you. I love you.” But still, I’d like to get one anyway.

The day came: a Monday at the end of September. The night before he had realized that it was almost exactly a year since the beating, although he hadn’t planned it that way. He left work early that evening. He had spent the weekend organizing his projects; he had written Lucien a memo detailing the status of everything he had been working on. At home, he lined up his letters on the dining room table, and a copy of his will. He had left a message with Richard’s studio manager that the toilet in the master bathroom kept running and asked if Richard could let in the plumber the following day at nine – both Richard and Willem had a set of keys to his apartment – because he would be away on business. He took off his suit jacket and tie and shoes and watch and went to the bathroom. He sat in the shower area with his sleeves pushed up. He had a glass of scotch, which he sipped at to steady himself, and a box cutter, which he knew would be easier to hold than a razor. He knew what he needed to do: three straight vertical lines, as deep and long as he could make them, following the veins up both arms. And then he would lie down and wait. He waited for a while, crying a bit, because he was tired and frightened and because he was ready to go, he was ready to leave. Finally he rubbed his eyes and began. He started with his left arm. He made the first cut, which was more painful than he had thought it would be, and he cried out. Then he made the second. He took another drink of the scotch. The blood was viscous, more gelatinous than liquid, and a brilliant, shimmering oil-black. Already his pants were soaked with it, already his grip was loosening. He made the third. When he was done with both arms, he slumped against the back of the shower wall. He wished, absurdly, for a pillow. He was warm from the scotch, and from his own blood, which lapped at him as it pooled against his legs – his insides meeting his outsides, the inner bathing the outer. He closed his eyes. Behind him, the hyenas howled, furious at him. Before him stood the house with its open door. He wasn’t close yet, but he was closer than he’d been: close enough to see that inside, there was a bed where he could rest, where he could lie down and sleep after his long run, where he would, for the first time in his life, be safe.

What can I tell you that you do not know Of the life after death? Your son’s eyes, which had unsettled us With your Slavic Asiatic Epicanthic fold, but would become So perfectly your eyes, Became wet jewels, The hardest substance of the purest pain As I fed him in his high white chair. Great hands of grief were wringing and wringing His wet cloth of face. They wrung out his tears. But his mouth betrayed you — it accepted The spoon in my disembodied hand That reached through from the life that had survived you. Day by day his sister grew Paler with the wound She could not see or touch or feel, as I dressed it Each day with her blue Breton jacket. By night I lay awake in my body The Hanged Man My neck-nerve uprooted and the tendon Which fastened the base of my skull To my left shoulder Torn from its shoulder-root and cramped into knots — I fancied the pain could be explained If I were hanging in the spirit From a hook under my neck-muscle. Dropped from life We three made a deep silence In our separate cots. We were comforted by wolves. Under that February moon and the moon of March The Zoo had come close. And in spite of the city Wolves consoled us. Two or three times each night For minutes on end They sang. They had found where we lay. And the dingos, and the Brazilian-maned wolves — All lifted their voices together With the grey Northern pack. The wolves lifted us in their long voices. They wound us and enmeshed us In their wailing for you, their mourning for us, They wove us into their voices. We lay in your death, In the fallen snow, under falling snow, As my body sank into the folk-tale Where the wolves are singing in the forest For two babes, who have turned, in their sleep, Into orphans Beside the corpse of their mother.

He was the son of a very wealthy industrialist who was to play a rather important part in the organizing of the next International Exhibition. I was struck by how knowledgeable this young man and the other few male friends of the girls were in things like clothes, ways of wearing them, cigars, English drinks, horses—a form of erudition that in him was highly developed, which he wore with a proud infallibility, reminiscent of the scholar’s modest reticence—an expertise that was quite selfsufficient, without the slightest need for any accompanying intellectual cultivation. He could not be faulted on the appropriate occasions for wearing dinner jacket or pajamas, but he had no idea of how to use certain words, or even of the most elementary rules of good grammar. That disparity between two cultures must have been shared by his father, who, in his capacity as president of the Association of Property Owners of Balbec, had written an open letter to his constituents, now to be seen as a placard on all the walls, in which he said, “I was desirous of talking to the Mayor about this matter, however, he was of a mind to not hear me out on my just demands.” At the Casino, Octave won prizes in all the dancing competitions—the Boston dip, the tango, and so on—a qualification, if he should ever need one, for a good marriage, among seaside society, a milieu in which a young girl quite literally ends up married to her “partner.” He lit a cigar and said to Albertine, “If you don’t mind,” as one excuses oneself for going on with an urgent piece of work in the presence of someone. For he always “had to be doing something,” though in fact he never did anything. Just as a total lack of activity can eventually have the same effects as overwork, whether in the emotional domain or in the domain of the body and its muscles, the constant intellectual vacuum that resided behind the pensive forehead of Octave had had the result, despite his undisturbed air, of giving him ineffectual urges to think, which kept him awake at night, as though he were a metaphysician with too much on his mind.

But before you do that, inform your master that we have arrived.” “His master,” said a biting voice from a rear doorway, “is aware of that.” Elizabeth swung around at the scathing tone of Ian’s voice, and her fantasy of seeing him fall to his knees in remorse the moment he set eyes on her collapsed the instant she saw his face; it was as hard and forbidding as a granite sculpture. He did not bother to come forward but instead remained where he was, his shoulder propped negligently against the door frame, his arms folded across his chest, watching her through narrowed eyes. Until then Elizabeth had thought she remembered exactly what he looked like, but she hadn’t. Not really. His suede jacket clung to wide shoulders that were broader and more muscular than she’d remembered, and his thick hair was almost black. His face was one of leashed sensuality and arrogant handsomeness with its sculpted mouth and striking eyes, but now she noticed the cynicism in those golden eyes and the ruthless set of his jaw-things she’d obviously been too young and naïve to see before. Everything about him exuded brute strength, and that in turn made her feel even more helpless as she searched his features for some sign that this aloof, forbidding man had actually held and kissed her with seductive tenderness. “Have you had an edifying look at me, Countess?” he snapped, and before she could recover from the shock of that rude greeting his next words rendered her nearly speechless. “You are a remarkable young woman, Lady Cameron-you must possess the instincts of a bloodhound to track me here. Now that you’ve succeeded, there is the door. Use it.” Elizabeth’s momentary shock gave way to a sudden, almost uncontrollable burst of wrath. “I beg your pardon?” she said tightly. “You heard me.” “I was invited here.” “Of course you were,” Ian mocked, realizing in a flash of surprise that the letter he’d had from her uncle must not have been a prank, and that Julius Cameron had obviously decided to regard Ian’s lack of reply as willingness, which was nothing less than absurd and obnoxious. In the last months, since news of his wealth and his possible connection to the Duke of Stanhope had been made public, he’d become accustomed to being pursued by the same socialites who had once cut him. Normally he found it annoying; from Elizabeth Cameron he found it revolting.

And then another book, never read, long forgotten, catches his eye. The jacket is missing, the title on the spine practically faded. It’s a thick clothbound volume topped with decades-old dust. The ivory pages are heavy, slightly sour, silken to the touch. The spine cracks faintly when he opens it to the title page. The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. “For Gogol Ganguli,” it says on the front endpaper in his father’s tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. “The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name” is written within quotation marks. Underneath the inscription, which he has never before seen, is his birthday, and the year, 1982. His father had stood in the doorway, just there, an arm’s reach from where he sits now. He had left him to discover the inscription on his own, never again asking Gogol what he’d thought of the book, never mentioning the book at all. The handwriting reminds him of the checks his father used to give him all through college, and for years afterward, to help him along, to put down a security deposit, to buy his first suit, sometimes for no reason at all. The name he had so detested, here hidden and preserved—that was the first thing his father had given him.

Only now are art critics, scholars of children’s literature, historians of book-cover design and commercial illustration, and chroniclers of the gay experience in postwar America waking up to the fact that Gorey is a critically neglected genius. His consummately original vision--expressed in virtuosic illustrations and poetic texts but articulated with equal verve in book-jacket design, verse plays, puppet shows, and costumes and sets for ballets and Broadway productions--has earned him a place in the history of American art and letters.

All right there, mate?’ Clark jumped and turned round. He straightened up and looked at Billy, recognition taking a few seconds. Billy’s hair was shorter now, and his face was tanned. ‘Christ, you startled me,’ he said. ‘What have you got there?’ Clark held up the jar by a piece of tatty string. ‘Sticklebacks!’ For a moment his blue eyes shone with excitement, then they clouded over. He ran a wet hand through his red hair and swept it off his face. His freckles were more pronounced than usual, and for a moment Billy saw him as an eleven-year-old again. He felt his throat constrict, which made his next sentence a strangled croak. ‘We had fun, didn’t we, Clark?’ Clark snorted and set the jar of fish down on a large stone. He waded out of the water and sat down heavily on the bank. Billy edged closer and then tentatively sat down next to him. ‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ said Clark. ‘Look, Clark. Can’t we be friends again?’ ‘Can’t we be friends again?’ mimicked Clark. ‘We’re not in the school playground now, Billy.’ ‘Why did you come here?’ asked Billy. Clark thought for a moment. ‘To reflect.’ He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a brown envelope. ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting it into Billy’s hands. Billy opened the envelope and stared at the contents. ‘You’ve been called up?’ ‘Military training,’ explained Clark. Billy knew it was only a matter of time. Since Parliament had passed the Act in April, all men aged twenty and twenty-one were required to undertake six months’ military training. He didn’t know what to say. ‘Clark, look …’ He passed the envelope back. ‘How’s Chrissie?’ asked Clark, looking Billy directly in the eye. Billy was taken by surprise at the sudden mention of her name and picked at a blade of grass. ‘She’s fine, thanks. In fact she’s with me now, over there.’ Clark looked in the direction of Billy’s finger and Chrissie slid out sheepishly from behind a tree.

Several times a day Viktor passed his hand over his chest, over the jacket pocket where he kept it. Once, when the pain seemed unbearable, he thought, “If I hide it away somewhere, I might slowly start to calm down. As things are, this letter’s like an open grave.” But he knew that he would sooner destroy himself than part with this letter that had, by some miracle, managed to find its way to him.

Tough boots, snug jeans and a wicked black leather jacket—trouble cruising for a place to land.

Officer Gurney ran a strip of yellow tape around the back area of the café, roping it off so no one could disturb the site. Then he scanned the crowd. His eyes lit on a comfortably plump woman wearing a red down jacket that made her look even plumper. She had a short brownish-blond ponytail that stuck out through a hole in her red baseball hat. “Brenda,” said Officer Gurney. “What do you think?” Grover was in danger of being late for school by this time. He’d already been late twice this month. If he was late again, he might get a note sent home to his parents. But he had to risk it. This was too interesting to miss. The woman stepped forward. Grover knew her, of course; everyone did. Mrs. Brenda Beeson was the one who had figured out the Prophet’s mumbled words and explained what they meant. She and her committee—the Reverend Loomis, Mayor Orville Milton, Police Chief Ralph Gurney, and a few others—were the most important people in the town. Officer Gurney raised the yellow tape so Mrs. Beeson could duck under it. She stood before the window a long time, her back to the crowd, while everyone waited to see what she would say. Clouds sailed slowly across the sun, turning everything dark and light and dark again. To Grover, it seemed like ages they all stood there, holding their breath. He resigned himself to being late for school and started thinking up creative excuses. The front door of his house had stuck and he couldn’t get it open? His father needed him to help fish drowned rats out of flooded basements? His knee had popped out of joint and stayed out for half an hour? Finally Mrs. Beeson turned to face them. “Well, it just goes to show,” she said. “We never used to have people breaking windows and stealing things. For all our hard work, we’ve still got bad eggs among us.” She gave an exasperated sigh, and her breath made a puff of fog in the chilly air. “If this is someone’s idea of fun, that person should be very, very ashamed of himself. This is no time for wild, stupid behavior.” “It’s probably kids,” said a man standing near Grover. Why did people always blame kids for things like this? As far as Grover could tell, grown-ups caused a lot more trouble in the world than kids. “On the other hand,” said Mrs. Beeson, “it could be a threat, or a warning. We’ve heard the reports about someone wandering around in the hills.” She glanced back at the bloody rag hanging in the window. “It might even be a message of some sort. It looks to me like that stain could be a letter, maybe an S, or an R.” Grover squinted at the stain on the cloth. To him it looked more like an A, or maybe even just a random blotch. “It might be a B,” said someone standing near him. “Or an H,” said someone else. Mrs. Beeson nodded. “Could be,” she said. “The S could stand for sin. Or if it’s an R it could stand for ruin. If you’ll let me have that piece of cloth, Ralph, I’ll show it to Althea and see if she has anything to say about it.” Just then Wayne Hollister happened to pass by, saw the crowd, and chimed in about what he’d seen in the night. His story frightened people even more than the blood and the broken glass. All around him, Grover heard them murmuring: Someone’s out there. He’s given us a warning. What does he mean to do? He’s trying to scare us. One woman began to cry. Hoyt McCoy, as usual, said that Brenda Beeson should not pronounce upon things until she was in full possession of the facts, which she was not, and that to him the

I know when I get real with myself, and I actually look at the world I’m growing up in, I want a savior. I’m sure of that. On most days I could not tell you what coffee I want, what train I want to take, or the jacket I want to wear, but I’ve always ached for a savior. The kind who gets right up close to your face and says, “Babycakes, this ain’t your battle. Stand back, I’m here now.

With one minute to spare, Madison arrived at the Space Needle. Her rose was hastily clipped into her short dark hair. Her cheeks were red from all of the mad rushing around. But she had made it on time. So had Jeremy. Once again he was waiting by the elevator that rode up to the top of the Space Needle. A somewhat faded blue carnation was pinned to the lapel of his jacket. Madison, who usually overplanned everything, hadn’t taken one second to plan what she would say when she finally met “Blue” face-to-face. A man with a bouquet of balloons passed by, and she ducked out of sight behind them. As she ran alongside the vendor, she hastily tried to collect her thoughts. So much was riding on this meeting, and she didn’t want to blow it. When the balloon man got close to the elevator tower, Madison jumped out from behind the balloons and hid by a corner of the tower. Her mind was still a complete blank. But she couldn’t leave Jeremy standing there for another minute. So she inched her way along the wall until she was safely hidden behind the post he was leaning against. Madison checked the TechnoMarine watch she’d borrowed from Piper. It was nearly five minutes after four. Time was running out! She had to say something. But what? Barely a foot away, she heard Jeremy exhale in frustration, and her heart sank. When he made a move to leave, her hand shot out from behind the pillar and caught hold of his. “Blue?” she whispered. “Please don’t turn around.” Jeremy didn’t move. “Okay,” he said warily. “I’m trying to find the words to tell you what our letters have meant to me,” she whispered. “And how much your friendship means to me.” Jeremy nodded. “It’s been important to me, too.” He started to turn around, but Madison tugged his arm, hard. “Don’t look, yet. Please!” Jeremy quickly turned his head away. “All right, but--” Madison didn’t let him finish. She squeezed her eyes shut and started babbling. “I didn’t know who you were until last Friday--which, incidentally, turned out to be about the most important day of my life. And when I knew it was you, I just didn’t know how to tell you that I was me. You once told me I was cold and heartless, and I just couldn’t bear it if you said it again. Everything has been so perfect, I just don’t want to blow it, and now that we’re standing here holding hands, I don’t want to let go--” “So don’t,” a voice whispered, very close to her cheek.

As parting gifts went, it defied understanding. When a guy gave someone their letter jacket, it had a meaning. But what did a blue henley imply? Was it a promise to go steady at the local Old Navy?

Four of them got out of the SUV, all heavily built, all wearing jeans, T-shirts, and, despite the heat, jackets. “Hi.” Bishop gave them a wave. “What the fuck are you doing here?” asked their leader. He had a shaved head and looked like his diet consisted mainly of horse steroids. “I’m sorry, didn’t your man at the gate tell you? We’re from Human Rights Watch, just doing an inspection on the conditions of the camp.” “Who gave you permission to do that?” “Oh I can’t remember, some guy from your headquarters.” He looked at Ice. “Do you remember his name? I think it was ‘Simon’ or something.” Ice didn’t miss a beat. “I seem to remember it was ‘Simeon.’ Yeah, Simeon.” “Simeon Isayev?” The man looked surprised. “Simeon Isayev gave you permission to come here?” The other henchmen looked at each other. “Yes, that’s correct.” Bishop smiled. “Lovely fellow.” “I don’t believe you. I’m going to call him.” “There’s really no need.” “Shut your mouth.” The thug started to dial a number on his cell phone. Bishop pulled out his false credentials. “Simeon was nice enough to give us this letter. Do you want to see it?” He stepped forward, offering the document. The Russian grunted. He had his phone to his ear with one hand and held out the other. Bishop’s punch caught him completely by surprise. It hit him square on the jaw, sending him reeling backward. He dropped his phone.

Writers are tough sons-of-bitches. It’s hard enough to write a book. Then you have to wade into this street fight we call the publishing industry and start pitching your project. The tweed jacket crowd is gone, replaced by Darwinian corporate mergers, staff churn, the e-book earthquake, anti-trust pricing scuffles, and book platforms multiplying like rabbits. You have to sort through too much personal information on too few agents, searching for a hook, parsing what they love, and what they want, and exactly how they want it presented. Your pitch letter has to be pitch perfect, a polished gem. You gotta sell more than a well-wrought paragraph; only Clancy and Cussler get a promo budget. You gotta show them you’ve got a social media game – tweet, facebook, link-in, chat, blog. You gotta help them sell your book. So what. I wouldn’t trade this trade for anything. Thanks, Gutenberg, for inventing this game I love.

When the dead girl’s mother attended the last game of the season wearing her daughter’s letter jacket, the cheerleaders performed through hot tears.

He withdrew a cylinder of paper from inside his jacket’s cuff and unrolled it so I could see the beautiful winding letters. The golden ink looked wet,

he tried to slap her face off, but after a blinding scissor motion with her arms, he found he had only stumps for hands. “My hands!” he screamed as the blood sprayed his prized football jacket with the giant letter sewn on the front.

He didn’t know what to do with his hands as he looked down at the sleeping general. Arin thrust them into his pockets before they went for the throat. He reminded himself why he had come. He ripped open the man’s jacket. Arin reached for the inside breast pocket, located exactly where the man had tried to touch his chest as he had lain bleeding on the road. Arin’s fingers met paper. He pulled it out, its texture suede-soft from having been handled so much. It had been unfolded and folded many times. It was sheet music. At first, Arin didn’t understand what he looked at. Kestrel’s handwriting. Herrani script. Musical notation in crisp black. His own name leaped off the page. Dear Arin. Then he recognized the music as the sonata Kestrel had been studying when he’d entered her music room at the imperial palace in late spring. It had been the last time he’d seen her before the tundra. He had thought it would be the last time he would ever see her. Arin hastened from the tent. He couldn’t read the letter here. But he didn’t know if he could read it anywhere, if any place would be private enough, because being alone meant he’d still be with himself, and he hated to remember how he’d left Kestrel that day, and what had befallen her after. He was desperate to read it. He couldn’t bear to read it. He resented that her father had kept it. He wondered what it meant that her father had kept it. Arin was only vaguely aware of having stumbled through the noisy camp and into the woods. The thought of reading the letter felt like a violation, like he’d be reading a letter meant for someone else. Yet it had been addressed to him. Dear Arin. Arin read.

Davy, ever the daring one, bought a jumbo peppermint milk shake and got fifty cents back. He talked me out of getting plain vanilla. “You can get plain vanilla anytime!” he said. “Try…” He scanned the chalkboard that listed all the flavors. “Try peanut butter!” I did. I have never been sorry, because it was the best milk shake I ever tasted, like a melted and frozen Reese’s cup. And then it happened. We were walking across the parking lot, under the burning sun, with our shakes freezing our hands in the big white paper cups that had Spinnin’ Wheel in red across the sides. A sound began: music, first from a few car radios and then others as teenaged fingers turned the dial to that station. The volume dials were cranked up, and the music flooded out from the tinny speakers into the bright summer air. In a few seconds the same song was being played from every radio on the lot, and as it played, some of the car engines started and revved up and young laughter flew like sparks. I stopped. Just couldn’t walk anymore. That music was unlike anything I’d ever heard: guys’ voices, intertwining, breaking apart, merging again in fantastic, otherworldly harmony. The voices soared up and up like happy birds, and underneath the harmony was a driving drumbeat and a twanging, gritty guitar that made cold chills skitter up and down my sunburned back. “What’s that, Davy?” I said. “What’s that song?” …Round…round…get around…wha wha wha-oooooo… “What’s that song?” I asked him, close to panic that I might never know. “Haven’t you heard that yet? All the high-school guys are singin’ it.” …Gettin’ bugged drivin’ up and down the same ol’ strip…I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip… “What’s the name of it?” I demanded, standing at the center of ecstasy. “It’s on the radio all the time. It’s called—” Right then the high-school kids in the lot started singing along with the music, some of them rocking their cars back and forth, and I stood with a peanut butter milk shake in my hand and the sun on my face and the clean chlorine smell of the swimming pool coming to me from across the street. “—by the Beach Boys,” Davy Ray finished. “What?” “The Beach Boys. That’s who’s singin’ it.” “Man!” I said. “That sounds…that sounds…” What would describe it? What word in the English language would speak of youth and hope and freedom and desire, of sweet wanderlust and burning blood? What word describes the brotherhood of buddies, and the feeling that as long as the music plays, you are part of that tough, rambling breed who will inherit the earth? “Cool,” Davy Ray supplied. It would have to do. …Yeah the bad guys know us and they leave us alone…I get arounnnnddddd… I was amazed. I was transported. Those soaring voices lifted me off the hot pavement, and I flew with them to a land unknown. I had never been to the beach before. I’d never seen the ocean, except for pictures in magazines and on TV and movies. The Beach Boys. Those harmonies thrilled my soul, and for a moment I wore a letter jacket and owned a red hotrod and had beautiful blondes begging for my attention and I got around.

How did you land such a position?” I affected nonchalance, trying not to think about the blade pressed to the merchant’s back. Trying not to think about the letter in my jacket’s inside pocket. “Yes well, if you try hard and believe in yourself, anything is possible.

I feel like a soft little marshmallow drown in his warm jacket, unguarded and vulnerable.

Damn, he was proud of her. There was no possible way this paper was going into the rubbish bin. Roman carefully folded it, hiding it in his jacket. As he hurried back to the Gazette, he couldn’t think of anything else save for Iris and her words.

walls of the Young Adult Room were painted purple and yellow. There were swirly zebra-print rugs on the floor and a lumpy cluster of beanbag chairs. A couple of sofas were designed to look like Scrabble trays, with letter-square pillows. Akimi nudged Kyle in the ribs. “Check it out.” In the far corner stood a carnival ticket booth with a mechanical dummy seated inside. A “Fun & Games” banner hung off the booth’s striped roof. The dummy inside the glass booth? He looked like Mr. Lemoncello. He wasn’t wearing a turban, but the Mr. Lemoncello mannequin reminded Kyle of the Zoltar Speaks fortuneteller booths he’d seen in video game arcades. “That’s not really him, is it?” said Akimi, who was right behind Kyle. “No. It’s a mechanical doll.” The frozen automaton was dressed in a black top hat and a bright red ringmaster jacket. Since the booth had the “Fun & Games” banner, Kyle figured you might have to talk to the dummy to get a game. “Um, hello,” he said. “We’d like to play a board game.” Bells rang, whistles whistled, and chaser lights blinked.

THIS WHOLE story would have remained hidden under the starched cuff and sleeve of a jacket, if not for the Weekly Review. The Weekly Review came up with a questionnaire (Your favorite writer? Your average weekly earnings? Your goal in life?) and sent it out to all subscribers. Among the thousands of completed forms (the Review had a huge circulation), the sorters found one, Form No. 11111, which, wander as it would from sorter to sorter, could not be sorted: On Form No. 11111, opposite “Average Earnings,” the respondent had written “0,” and opposite “Goal in Life,” in clear round letters, “To bite my elbow.

That Lecia sends her son’s outgrown slick leather jackets and that fancy loafers come free never strikes me as fortune. Nor does my subsidized rent. Nor the fancy Harvard doctors Dev has through Warren’s job. Nor the Minks’ ongoing calls and letters. I have a gaze that blanks out luck any time I face it, like a black box over the eyes of a porn star. Whap and thunk. I compose my Christmas list for my in-laws, who always give exactly what you ask for—nothing more, nothing less. This year I’ve asked for a crockpot, but I secretly long for a Smith & Wesson. The machine jams. I resist the urge to step back five yards and head-butt it repeatedly. By fumbling around on the side, I locate some kind of handle and pull. I stare at the machine’s innards. For one thousand years I could ponder here before any useful action came to me.

Barnabas goes to the offices, mingles with the servants as if he were one of them, even occasionally sees an official in the distance, he is regularly given important letters to carry, why, even oral messages are entrusted to him to be delivered. That’s a great deal, and we can be proud of what he has already achieved at such a young age.’ K. nodded. There was no thought of going home in his mind now. ‘Does he have his own livery too?’ he asked. ‘The jacket, you mean?’ said Olga. ‘No, Amalia made that for him even before he was a messenger. But you are close to touching a sore point. For a long time he’d have liked to have, well, not a livery, because there is no such thing at the castle, but an official suit, and he was promised one too, but they are very dilatory about such things at the castle, and the worst of it is that you never know what the delay means. It could mean that the matter is going through official channels, but then again it could mean that the official process hasn’t even begun, that—for instance—they want to test Barnabas more first. And finally , it could also mean that the case has already been through official channels, and Barnabas will never get that suit. Nothing can be discovered in more detail, or only after a long time. We have a saying here—maybe you know it—“ Official decisions are as elusive as young girls.

Beep, Beep, Buzz, Buzz My day begins with Jenny aka (Jenna) Talya- laying on the horn in her black 2003 ford focus with the paint peeling on the hood. And reading a text from my bestie Jenny saying- ‘Don’t forget b*tches, it's love-o-grams day!’ My mom yells out the door every day not to do that, yet it goes in one ear and out the other with Jenny. Jenny does what Jenny wants to do. Yet that horn has a way of like going through you… you know. Especially at five- fifty-five every single morning. ‘Hurry the hell up, I am not getting any younger over here!’ She yells out the window of the SUV. And my mom yells about that too, ‘stop cursing!’ Then I say something like ‘Keep your pants on… I am coming! I am ‘Cumming!’’ As the nosey neighbor lady peps- out one of the slats of their window blind at us. It always seems to be I am running to get where I am going, even from house door to car door. Most of the time passing up that one book up on the floor, which you need for class on the way out without thinking, in such a rush. I didn't even put on Ray's letterman jacket he gave me to wear, I balled it up in my arms. Just like my purse and backpack zippers were somewhat open, that was just a horn in my one right shoulder. Right before that my darling pain in the ass little sister Kellie, who is ten years old. She grabs one of my bookable handles and tugs me back off my footing. WHAT- is it! I spun around looking like a demon child just snarling at her. She said crying. I just wanted to hug you, Karly. And I said- forget it… I am late now, and can’t you see I am texting my ‘BF! -Boyfriend’ So stop wasting my time little girl. (No- I know I am not a very nice person. I know that now! Yet I did think! I thought I was going to see her letter that night. I would give anything to have going back and hugged her that last time… that day.) It seemed that I was always too busy to spend any time with her. As a teen girl, like I said. My time was mostly spent on boys- well mostly Ray, talking and getting together, and partying to be popular. I thought that was what living a good life was all about. It’s just as if she always picked the worst times to try to bother me. Um- I’m not perfect, and there is only some much time in the day to play, and she wanted to play all the time. Though, I can see her turning into a little me. I was the one she looked up to. Mom was certainly trying to get her some help for her impulsiveness; we all think she has ADHD or something for how clinging she is. She is mom and dad’s favorite though I feel that girl is not what I would call under-loved that’s for sure. Yet mom and dad don’t see anything wrong with her having all that energy, and to be like running around, sucking down the soda, and cramming down the junk food. She is picked on to like me; I was before I fell into Jenny's hand of friends. I hope she can do the same. All at the same time I hope she doesn’t, I don’t want to see her fall into the wrong as I did.

At the top of the gangplank, he is handed a form letter from President Roosevelt. You bear with you, it says, the hope, the confidence, the gratitude, and the prayers of your family, your fellow-citizens, and your President. The same president who sent them to interment camps. Who keeps their parents and brothers and sisters behind barbed-wire fences. Few bother to read the letter. Some slip it into their jacket, the blank side to alter be used to tally card score or gambling debts, or, when toilet paper runs out, other uses. Most toss the paper into the foaming waters below.

Dragging the Lake" They are skimming the lake with wooden hooks. Where the oak throws its handful of shadows Children are gathering fireflies. I wait in the deep olive flux As their cries ricochet out of the dark. Lights spear the water. I hear the oak speak. It foists its mouthful of sibilants On a sky involved with a stillborn moon, On the stock-still cottages. I lean Into the dark. On tiny splints, One trellised rose is folding back Its shawls. The beacon strikes the lake. Rowboats bob on the thick dark Over my head. My fingers wave Goodbye, remember me. I love This cold, these captive stars. I shake My blanket of shadows. I breathe in: Dark replenishes my two wineskins. My eyes are huge, two washed-out mollusks. Oars fall, a shower of violet spray. When will my hosts deliver me, Tearing me with their wooden hooks? Lights flicker where my live heart kicked. I taste pine gum, they have me hooked. They reel me in, a displaced anchor. The cygnets scatter. I rise, I nod, Wrapped in a jacket of dark weed. I dangle, I am growing pure, I fester on this wooden prong. An angry nail is in my tongue.

Les Frontières Humaines[by Ribemont-Dessaigne] came and I looked at the jacket and I do not read it. It looks too good. I am saving it for a rainy day, a day of despair, when one wants to eat his fellow man. I love the looks of it. I believe in it before reading a page.

There are many safe places in my bedroom, and with Molly and Kiran's help I searched them all. I found a bundle of dead roses, a homemade CD from America, several guitar picks (how I wish I could see Tom again), a photo of me on Grandad's knee, a sponge shaped like a dinosaur, a T-shirt with teh sleeves chopped off and CRIME PAYS in iron-on letters across the front, a hat that I had when I was five and which was exactly like a hat Sarah used to wear, a packet of banana-flavored chews (why did I keep them?), and a picture of our house that I drew long, long ago on my first day at school. And I found, last of all, in the pocket of a jacket that used to be Indigo's, the diamond ring.

My feet were beat to hell from running on rocky ground. My middle left toe was probably broken. "I thought you promised Curran nothing violent." Julie handed me my turtleneck. "No, I promised him I wouldn't fight a giant." "So you obey the letter of the law and not the spirit," she said. "Yes." My teeth finally stopped chattering. I loved my turtleneck. I loved my jacket. I loved my boots. Mmm, wonderful warm boots. "How come when I do that, you chew me out?" "Because you don't do it well enough to get away with it.

I seem to recall a rule regarding breeches,” he said. “They’re not breeches, they’re trousers.” He arched one brow. “So you think you’re justified in breaking the spirit of the law as long as you keep to the letter?” “Yes. Besides, you have no right to make rules about my attire in the first place.” Devon fought back a grin. If her impudence was intended to discourage him, it had the opposite effect. He was a man, after all, and a Ravenel to boot. “Nevertheless,” he said, “there will be consequences.” Kathleen shot him an uncertain glance. He kept his expression impassive as they headed through the stables to the saddle room. “There’s no need for you to accompany me,” Kathleen said, her pace quickening. “I’m sure you have much to do.” “Nothing as important as this.” “As what?” she asked warily. “Finding out the answer to one question.” Kathleen stopped near the wall of saddle racks, squared her shoulders, and turned to face him resolutely. “Which is?” She tugged meticulously at the fingers of her riding gloves and pulled them from her hands. Devon loved her willingness to stand up to him, even though she was half his size. Slowly he reached out and removed her hat, tossing it to the corner. Some of the defiant tension left her slight frame as she realized that he was playing with her. She looked very young with her cheeks flushed and her hair a bit mussed from the ride. He moved forward, crowding her back against the wall between two rows of empty racks, effectively pinning her into the small space. Gripping the narrow lapels of her riding jacket, he lowered his mouth to her ear and asked softly, “What do ladies wear beneath their riding trousers?