A Curious Tale of the In-Between

She knew that the dead hid pieces of themselves in the world. They buried organs in the living. They stuffed memories into trees and clouds and other innocuous things.

They are paper cutouts rather than people, Pram thought. They are shadows with black dots for eyes and grim lines for mouths. They almost resemble the dead, but not quite.

She was a drawing that hadn't been colored.

Felix had left his heart buried in the ground years ago, but he felt it crack apart.

He was now working his way through the many shades of grief. Sadness made everything gray, he'd learned, but there were different types of gray, some darker than others. There were dark spots in his memories he wasn't brave enough to enter.

To lose one's mother was to lose the beginning of one's life story.

Pram wasn't told the story of her birth. But even as a very small girl, she felt deep in her chest that she was alive and dead at the same time.

Stone gnomes and angels filled the gardens, and it seemed that they were also sleeping, as though a witch had cast a spell on them.

She wished that when her heart was beating double, she could give one of those hearts to him and then press her ear to his chest and feel it beating.

The clouds took on the shape of dancers; from somewhere far off, Pram heard music before the clouds became normal again.

They're making me go to school," Pram said. "I don't think it's a very good idea. I've read about how cruel kids can be." "Are you afraid they'll be cruel, or that being around them for too long will make you cruel?" Felix said. "Both, I suppose.

Hush-a-bye, don't you cry Go to sleepy, little baby When you wake, you shall have All the pretty little horses Way down yonder in the meadow Lies a poor little lambie Bees and butterflies, picking out its eyes...

What's it like to be able to remember someone you lost?" "It's like my mother has become an actress in a play. And the play isn't told in order, and sometimes the lines have changed. Sometimes I'm sitting too far away to see her face or hear her voice.

Felix wasn't sure of his limits, if he had limits. After he'd been dead a while, he began to suspect he could swim to the bottom of the oceans. Beyond that. He suspected that he could swim so far down that he'd eventually go through the center of the earth and come out the other side. He could swim into the clouds, into the stars. Maybe there were ghosts on the other planets. Maybe there were ghosts laughing and splashing each other with the heat of the sun. He wasn't brave enough to find out.