01UndatedLet me just unsubscribe to my own mind already, because I don't get any of it.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
02UndatedI look into his sorrowless eyes and a door in my heart blows open. And when we kiss, i see that on the other side of that door is sky.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
03UndatedI'd been making desicions for days.I picked out the dress Bailey would wear forever-a black slinky one- innapropriate- that she loved.I chose a sweater to go over it, earrings, bracelet, necklace, her most beloved strappy sandals.I collected her makeup to give to the funeral director with a recent photo-I thought it would be me that would dress her;I didn't think a strange man should see her nakedtouch her bodyshave her legsapply her lipstickbut that's what happened all the same.I helped Gram pick out the casket,the plot at the cemetery.I changed a few linesin the obituary that Big composed.I wrote on a piece of paper what I thoughtshould go on the headstone.I did all this without uttering a word.Not one word, for days,until I saw Bailey before the funeraland lost my mind.I hadn't realized that when people say so-and-sosnappedthat's what actually happens-I started shaking her-I thought I could wake her upand get her the hell out of that box.When she didn't wake,I screamed: Talk to me.Big swooped me up in his arms, carried me out of the room, the church,into the slamming rain,and down to the creekwhere we sobbed togetherunder the black coat he held over our headsto protect us from the weather.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
07UndatedI'm thinking the reason I've been so quiet all those years is only because Brian wasn't around yet for me to tell everything to.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
08UndatedIn photographs of us together, she is always looking at the camera, and I am always looking at her.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
09UndatedI notice he doesn't have his meteorite bag and see out the window it's probably going to pour any minute, but wee need to et out of here. Immediately. "We're going to search for meteorites," I say, like that's what most people do on winter mornings. I never really told either of them too much about last summer, which is reflected in both of their flummoxed faces. But who freaking cares?Not us.In a flash, we're through the door, across the street and into the woods, running for no reason and laughing for no reason and totally out of breath and out of our minds when Brian catches me by my shirt, whips me around, and with one strong hand flat against my chest, he pushes me against a tree and kisses me so hard I go blind.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
11UndatedLove does as it undoes. It goes after with equal tenacity: joy and heartbreak. Her happiness was his unhappiness and that's the unfair way it was.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
12UndatedThey do make love stories for girls with black hearts after all. They go like this.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
13UndatedMy heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier. Because I imagined it.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
15UndatedMale leads in love stories need to be devoted, need to chase trains, cross continents, give up fortunes and thrones, defy convention, face prosecution, take apart rooms and break the backs of angels, sketch the beloved all over the cement walls of their studios, build sculptures as homages. They don't flirt shamelessly with the likes of me when they have Transylvanian girlfriends. What an effing jerk.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
17UndatedThis is how he came out: he floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
18UndatedThere were once two sisterswho were not afriad of the darkbecause the dark was full of the other's voiceacross the room,because even when the night was thickand starlessthey walked home together from the riverseeing who could last the longestwithout turning on her flashlight,not afraidbecause sometimes in the pitch of nightthey'd lie on their backsin the middle of the pathand look up until the stars came backand when they did,they'd reach their arms up to touch themand did.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
19UndatedAnd it's just dawned on me that I might be the author of my own story, but so is everyone else the author of their own stories, and sometimes, like now, there's no overlap.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
20UndatedI tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
21UndatedThe eye-roll is a 10.5 on the Ritcher. The Big One. California has slipped into the ocean.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
22UndatedMaybe what my sister wanted was to stay here and get married and have a family.Maybe that was her color of extraordinary.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
23UndatedI have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind.Jandy Nelson / quote ↗
