When Everything Seems Blurry Quotes

I’ve heard that when you’re in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you’re hyper-aware of what’s happening around you. As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me. Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren’t bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder’s cursing, my pounding heartbeat. I feel nothing—not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb. Scent and taste disappear. The only thing about my body that works is my eyes,and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land—a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home. My eyes drink up the image of the planet—and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I’ve never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent—it dips and curves in ways I don’t recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect. And it’s not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home,but it will never be the home I left behind.

So what did you and Landon do this afternoon?” Minka asked, her soft voice dragging him back to the present. Angelo looked up to see that Minka had already polished off two fajitas. Damn, the girl could eat. “Landon gave me a tour of the DCO complex. I did some target shooting and blew up a few things. He even let me play with the expensive surveillance toys. I swear, it felt more like a recruiting pitch to get me to work there than anything.” Minka’s eyes flashed green, her full lips curving slightly. Damn, why the hell had he said it like that? Now she probably thought he was going to come work for the DCO. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, not after just reenlisting for another five years. The army wasn’t the kind of job where you could walk into the boss’s office and say, “I quit.” Thinking it would be a good idea to steer the conversation back to safer ground, he reached for another fajita and asked Minka a question instead. “What do you think you’ll work on next with Ivy and Tanner? You going to practice with the claws for a while or move on to something else?” Angelo felt a little crappy about changing the subject, but if Minka noticed, she didn’t seem to mind. And it wasn’t like he had to fake interest in what she was saying. Anything that involved Minka was important to him. Besides, he didn’t know much about shifters or hybrids, so the whole thing was pretty damn fascinating. “What do you visualize when you see the beast in your mind?” he asked. “Before today, I thought of it as a giant, blurry monster. But after learning that the beast is a cat, that’s how I picture it now.” She smiled. “Not a little house cat, of course. They aren’t scary enough. More like a big cat that roams the mountains.” “Makes sense,” he said. Minka set the other half of her fourth fajita on her plate and gave him a curious look. “Would you mind if I ask you a personal question?” His mouth twitched as he prepared another fajita. He wasn’t used to Minka being so reserved. She usually said whatever was on her mind, regardless of whether it was personal or not. “Go ahead,” he said. “The first time we met, I had claws, fangs, glowing red eyes, and I tried to kill you. Since then, I’ve spent most of the time telling you about an imaginary creature that lives inside my head and makes me act like a monster. How are you so calm about that? Most people would have run away already.” Angelo chuckled. Not exactly the personal question he’d expected, but then again Minka rarely did the expected. “Well, my mom was full-blooded Cherokee, and I grew up around all kinds of Indian folktales and legends. My dad was in the army, and whenever he was deployed, Mom would take my sisters and me back to the reservation where she grew up in Oklahoma. I’d stay up half the night listening to the old men tell stories about shape-shifters, animal spirits, skin-walkers, and trickster spirits.” He grinned. “I’m not saying I necessarily believed in all that stuff back then, but after meeting Ivy, Tanner, and the other shifters at the DCO, it just didn’t faze me that much.” Minka looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re a real American Indian? Like in the movies? With horses and everything?” He laughed again. The expression of wonder on her face was adorable. “First, I’m only half-Indian. My dad is Mexican, so there’s that. And second, Native Americans are almost nothing like you see in the movies. We don’t all live in tepees and ride horses. In fact, I don’t even own a horse.” Minka was a little disappointed about the no-horse thing, but she was fascinated with what it was like growing up on an Indian reservation and being surrounded by all those legends. She immediately asked him to tell her some Indian stories. It had been a long time since he’d thought about them, but to make her happy, he dug through his head and tried to remember every tale he’d heard as a kid.

Yes, I agreed to marry the prince so that you could have your independence. Yes, I was Tensen’s spy. Yes, I loved you.” There was a silence. Fireflies lit the distance. “Why didn’t I say that then? I wonder what would have happened if I had.” And now? he wanted to ask. Do you love me now? He felt her uncertainty. He felt--as if it had already happened, and he’d already asked--the damage of forcing the question. She spoke as if she’d heard it anyway. “You are important to me,” she said, and touched his face. Important. The word swelled and deflated. More than he’d thought. Less than he wanted. But this: her touching him. How his blood jumped. He stayed very still. No more mistakes. He couldn’t afford any. He would do nothing. Something. No. She found the curves of his closed eyelids, the shape of his nose, the divot above his mouth, the rasp along his jaw where he hadn’t shaved. His skin began to dream. Then his pulse. His flesh. Right down to the bones. She shifted on the grass. Green and orange perfumed the air. It was on her skin. She tasted like it, too, when her mouth brushed his, and their noses bumped awkwardly, and he wished he could see her as she breathed a laugh and his hands went into her hair despite himself, despite what he’d told her the night before he’d left his home about what was enough and what wasn’t. The tang of citrus on her tongue. He forgot himself. He moved her beneath him and felt their bodies mark the grass. A fluffy breeze stirred the heavy air, floating over the arch of his back. She tugged up his shirt and he went down onto his elbows. The hilt of her dagger dug into his belly. He stayed where he was, her palms warm water flowing over his skin. He didn’t want to make a sound. Even his blood seemed loud as he kissed her. Then a campfire lit the near dark. Startled, he pulled away. He could see her face better now. Slow eyes, a blurry mouth, and a question stealing across her expression. He’d imagined this before, or something close to it. Close enough, he decided, but then had the sudden worry that if before she had come to him in his suite because she had wanted to remember, maybe this time, knowing what she knew now, he was just a way for her to forget. He pushed himself up. He heard a rustle as she sat up, too, and wrapped her arms around her trousered knees. He kept his eyes off her. He straightened his shirt, but it felt odd, like it didn’t fit him anymore. The sticky air cooled between them. He pushed damp hair off his brow. His limbs--so certain of themselves only moments ago--became an awkward jumble. Kestrel said, “Will you tell me about the day we met?” This was unexpected. “It wasn’t a nice day.” “I want to know everything from then until now.” Still unsure, Arin said, “But you haven’t before.” “I trust you. You won’t lie to me.

Where is the information that you stole from us?” Commander Paine asked again. “Fuck you,” Justin spat. “Insolent shit.” Justin felt bile rise in his throat when Commander Paine slammed a knee into his stomach. His head snapped back, teeth clacking together, when, after doubling over, he received a swift uppercut to the underside of his jaw. Everything grew blurry. He tried to focus, but he couldn’t seem to regain his sensibilities. “I’ll ask one more time, where is the information that you stole from us?” Justin struggled to reply. “I… I gave it to… your mom… after fucking her.” The last thing Justin saw was a boot traveling for his face.

Chapter One Outside Buchanan School. 7:50 AM. Stupid ideas don’t seem so stupid when you’re about to go through with the stupid idea. Really stupid ideas shine brighter the second they enter your brain. Like, “Hey, man, you prob’ly shouldn’t do what you’re about to do!” I like to think of a field of kittens when that happens… makes it easier to ignore my common sense. Ahhhhh… field kittens. My name is Max… and I was about to do something really stupid. The air smelled of freshly cut grass as birds chirped from trees full of leaves. I took a deep breath as I stalled, hoping a meteor would crash into the planet so I wouldn’t have to go through with the thing. Kids just getting to school lined the sidewalk, curious about what was happening. I squeezed the handlebars of my bike, listening to the sound of tightening rubber under my fingers. “Max, you okay?” Beck, my best friend, said from somewhere. I didn’t know where exactly since fear was making everything blurry. I shook my head to clear the fog. “Never been better,” I said. “Are… are the thrusters working?” It took him a second to answer. “I’unno. I never tested ‘em.” I nodded bravely like a hero who was about to meet his maker. “Nice.” It became blazingly obvious that the world wasn’t going to end anytime over the next few seconds, which meant I was gonna have to perform the stunt that everyone was waiting to see. The stunt wasn’t anything crazy – just a kid jumping his bike over the bike rack filled with other bikes. In front of the bike rack was a cement lip that curved at the bottom, making a nice little ramp that everyone joked about jumping their bike off of. I was about to be the kid that did it. Easy enough, right? Well, my buddy, Beck, thought it’d be epic if I attached some thrusters to the back of my bike. No rocket fuel or flames – just a couple of cans of ultra-compressed air that would fire when I flipped the switch. It was a rig he built himself – that was kind of Beck’s specialty. Jumping the rack was a stunt that I’d been working on for weeks. I knew I wanted to do it because of all the kids who hadn’t done it before. And I was gonna nail it, and the whole school – no, the whole school district – no… the whole city was gonna talk about it when it was done.

I remember the time on the school bus back before anyone could drive, Jenny bet me a dollar, to put my hand down her jeans to prove she wears thong undies. Saying that I am such a baby, for not knowing, that’s how that all started, she felt like she had to teach me everything. Anyways back then I was still where Mickey Mouse Briefs and did even think about what was underneath. She beat me to feel that she was not a virgin, that she was all open and smooth, unlike me at the time. I didn’t even shave my legs yet. So, I did, I went for it. The rush here was touching a girl inappropriately, with everyone looking, and hoping the driver didn’t see. I’ll never forget Danny Hover looking over the site with Andrea Doeskin smelling, like little perv’s, and Shy saying- ‘Oh my God’- snickering at the fact, from the set accordingly. Yeah, it’s that kind of rush I get, over and over being with them. Just like Jenny got Liv fixed up with Dilco, it’s all about the rush in the end. Jenny can be a hell of a lot of fun, and it’s that fun that keeps me coming back for more, the same way Liv and Maddie do, and other girls keep trying to be like us, it’s all about the craziness. I don’t know why but when I am with them- I want to be so naughty! I remember Marcel smacking my butt, just to be cute, every time he would see me in the hallways of a school. -Yeah, he’s weird, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him as I was- well… doing me. Yet Ray’s photo was looking at me on my nightstand. ~*~ In my bed, I snap the bright light off when I hear my little sis coming down the hall, everyone goes back to being fuzzy, like I’m not looking at my room but only at a blurry photo of my room that was taken with a shaky hand incorrectly and nothing match up with the real thing. My sis went into the bathroom next door to tinkle, so I snapped on my nightlight, and then that light modifies everything, so it looks somewhat ordinary again. If my sis sees my light on from the crack at the bottom of my door, she will come bursting in. I have learned to keep it as dark as I can when I hear her coming run down the hallway. I love her, yet I want my privacy. All at once it comes back to me, like a hangover rush all my blood starts going back up into my head: the party, my sis getting laid, the argument with Ray, falling to Marcel, all the sex, all the drinking, and drugs, it’s all thumping hard in my brain, like my covered button was a few moments ago, on cam. I am still lying here uncovered, with everything still out in the open. ‘Kellie!’ My door swings open, hammering the door handle against my wall, and sis comes bolting across my room, jumping in my bed, pacing over my textbook's notebooks, love notes, and pills of dirty tops and bottoms and discarded jeans, I panic thinking my Victoria’s Secret Heritage Pink nighty way over there on the floor, where I thought it off and left it the night before. Yet it’s not liked my sis has not seen me naked before… but is wired when this happens. Something is not right, something seems very wrong and oggie; something skirts the edges of my memory, but then it is gone as my head pounds and sis is bouncing on my bed on top of me, throwing her arms and legs around my nude torso. Saying- ‘So what are you going to show me today?’ I am thinking to myself- girl you already got it down, doing what you’re doing now, I don’t need to teach you anything. Kellie- she is so hot… (Oh God not in that way, she’s- my sis.) She is like a little furnace with her worth coming from her tiny body. It’s not too long before her nighty rides up, and I can see it all in my face like she wants to be just like me, and then she starts asking her questions.