Sarah Ockler

“I'm not sure if you even want me around or if you just feel sorry for me. I'm not sure of anything.”

“Mom asked for a cupcake miracle? Well, here comes the freaking holy angel of icing, at your service. --”

“Through pictures, we cut reality in pieces. We selected only the choicest moments, discarding the rest as if they'd never happened.”

“But I knew he wouldn't kiss me. Not tonight. Not like this. There was too much between us now, all the words and near misses. All the potential, the alternate futures that would stretch out before us in an unending spiral, all built on what happened in this moment. I held his fiery gaze and remembered the five-oh, the half-and-half, the promises I'd whispered to myself in the dawn light.I might lose all my memories one day, but that wouldn't keep me from making them.”

“They tear each other apart. Sometimes there aren't any happy endings or logical explanations and we just have to accept that and move on. Sometimes it really is that simple.”

“Sorry.” I’m surprised and glad she doesn’t recognize it. I run my thumb back and forth over a crusty bit on the shoulder strap as a five-second version of the cake fight flashes behind my eyes like a movie stuck on quick search. Don’t cry over spilt frosting, Anna. “I just – I like this one.” “What for?” she asks. Just tell her. “It’s from the – it’s just the–” I bite my lower lip. Tell her. “Anna? What’s wrong?” Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just that it’s from the first time your brother kissed me and made me promise not to tell you. And I was in love with him forever, and he was supposed to tell you about it in California, and we were all going to live happily ever after. I still write him letters in the journal he gave me, which he doesn’t answer, since he’s dead and all. But other than that? Honestly, it’s nothing. “Anna?” She watches me with her sideways face again. “Huh? Oh, sorry. Nothing. I’m fine. I – I’ll get rid of it later.”

“I really don't even know you, and yet, in my life, you are forever entangled; to my history, inextricably bound.”

“I'm still dropping dishes thinking in slow motion about the GPS woman in Mom's car. I imagine her beckoning me from outside the kitchen window illuminated like some robot-angel calling me forth to the Lexus where she will ferry me off to that planet of monotonous peace that special otherworldly place where all the residents are relaxed and confident and completely numb. Your life will. Get better in. Six. Point four. Million. Miles.”

“It takes a strong woman to lose everything, then stand naked in front of the mirror and face herself again. You need time, honey. And I don't mean time for it to go away. I mean time to learn how to live with it. This is a pain you'll always carry.”

“Beneath the vast diamond sky, I felt both all important and utterly significant, the goddess and the damned in equal measure.”

“Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.”

“Anna," he said, dragging his frosted fingers through my hair."Don't you know what it means when a boy pulls your hair at your birthday party?" "No." Just, then, i didn't know what anything meant.”

“Nothing ever really goes away--it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.”

“This boy wore the ocean in his eyes, green-gray-blue, ever shifting, and I recognized him immediately. Knew before he said another word that he was as dangerous as he was beautiful.”

“I was, but then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore. That the person I missed didn't exist anymore. People change. The things we like and dislike change. And we can wish they couldn't all day long but that never works.”

“I can't stop thinking about what he felt like against my body, against my lips. I can't remember anything else, anything before that. And I realize in this moment that I've finally done it. That horrible, awful thing I swore I would never do.The frosting. The cigarettes. The blue glass triangle. The shooting stars. The taste of his mouth on mine in the hall closet. Gone. All I can think about is Sam. Matt is – erased. My whole body is warm and buzzing. Sam is smiling next to me, because of me. And I've never felt so lonely in all my life.”

“See, some people politely encourage their tone-deaf friends to sing. Some people even convince them to go on live television and audition for national competitions. But me? I am not that friend.”

“They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched.”

“You ask me why I’m nice to you,” he said. “Why, why, why. But you don’t ask me stuff that matters. Who I am or where I been. What I see when I look at you. What I want.”

“Frankie Perino and I were lucky that day. Lucky to be alive-that's what everyone said.”