Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Sunshine, if I ever disappear, please tell people that I ran after the Devil, trying to get my soul back.

Lots of people have bad stories, and if they wail and sob and tell their story to anyone who’ll listen, it’s crap. Or half crap, at least.The stuff that really hurts people, the stuff that almost breaks them . . . that they won’t talk about. Ever.

Hence? My habit of reading more than I socialized made me use odd, awkward words without thinking.

You stop fearing the Devil when you're holding his hand...

Freddie once told me that I was the worst kind of stubborn-because I wasn't stubborn at all. I was patient. Patient, but determined. A stubborn person could be distracted, or tricked. But not me. I just held on and on and on, never giving up until I got my way, long after everyone else stopped caring.

Freddie often fold me that you've got to be happy when you can, because life won't wait for you to take the time. And she was right.

I wish people would spread a Faustian rumor about me.' I leaned over and knocked Sunshine's hand out of Luke's hair. 'A Faustian myth,' I repeated. 'It's so much more interesting than just being that nouveau-poor blond girl who lives in a big house with nobody but her jackass brother with pecs bigger than his brain. Sunshine, if I ever disappear, please tell people that I ran after the Devil, trying to get my soul back.

It's easier to forgive someone for scaring you than for making you cry.

The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess hears in a book,before a mad woman sets the bed curtains on fire.

River had never lost his cool, not since I'd know him. That was the thing about River. He was calm. Calm as a summer's day. Calm as a gentle nap in the sun. Even when girls were fainting and men were slitting their throats in front of you.

I walked into her arms and we hugged like hugging was breathing and we'd been holding our breath for a long, long time.

If attics could make wishes, this one would have nothing to wish for.

River's kiss tasted like coffee and storms and secrets. And slowly, slowly he began to move faster, and then faster... And then he stopped. River let go of me, just like that. Just about the time I'd forgotten who I was, just about the time I'd forgotten we were even two separate people anymore and not just one glowing, quivering, ocean of kissing... he let me go. He stepped back and took a deep breath.

Mea Culpa. By That Sin Fell the Angels. Exuro, Exuro, Exuro.

Please tell me you don't go around saying crap like that to everyone. No wonder no one in town ever talks to us. Wealthy families always have a crazy person or two. Is that really the role you want to play, Vi?" "We're not wealthy anymore. Remember? So if I'm crazy, no one will care.

Our town was small enough that I never developed a healthy fear of strangers. To me, they were exciting things, gift-wrapped and full of possibilities, the sweet smell of somewhere else wafting from them like perfume.

I coughed and choked, and drowned on moonlight, which tastes like butter and steel and salt and mist. And then, just like that, just when I thought she was going to kill me, suck the air out of my lungs and make me a ghost too, she lifted her hand, and... faded away.

Lying makes life more interesting. Not to mention easier, for the most part.

Some people don’t deserve to live. And, to go a step further, some people need to die.

He looks expensive. In a vintage way. He has a good smile. It's kind of crooked.

The Citizen's attic was, objectively, breathtaking. The place was littered with trunks and old clothes and wardrobes and pieces of furniture and strange metal toys no one had played with in sixty years and half-painted canvases and on and on. There were several round windows to let in the sunlight, and I loved how it raked its way across the floor as I watched, dust dancing like sugerplum fairies in the bold yellow glow. If attics could make wishes, this one would have nothing to wish for.

There’s truths and then there’s truths, Violet. And some damn truths shouldn’t be spoken out loud, or the Devil will hear, and then he’ll come for you. Amen.

I didn’t move for a bit, just lay there thinking about things. Like how the world was full of mystery and magic and horror and love.

I had to tell someone that a panther-hipped boy had come to live in my backyard.

You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart,” I said. “What?” “It’s from a poem by Auden. It’s something Freddie used to say sometimes.” “What’s it mean?” “That nobody is perfect, I think.” “Well,” River replied. “That’s the truest thing said round the world today.

But Luke would never be friends with a girl, even if they were into the same things - like locking me in closets with brutish boys from school, or setting the books I was reading on fire.

I loved my bedroom... the vanity with the warped mirror, the squat chairs without armrests, the elaborate, oriental dressing screen. I loved curving my body into the velvet sofa, books piled at my feet, the dusty, floor-length curtains pushed back from the windows so I could see the sky. At night the purple-fringed lampshades turned the light a hue somewhere between lilac and dusky plum.

You stop fearing the Devil when you're holding his hand.

River looked out the kitchen window, at the purple-black sky and the purple-black sea. "I've been having nightmares since I turned fourteen. Always. But then I took a nap with you a few days ago, and, all of a sudden, they're gone. I leave for a day, and 'boom', they come back, just like that." He paused. "You know what this means, don't you?" I shook my head. "It means that you're just going to have to sleep next to me, for the rest of my life.

I pulled a black party dress and fake pearls out of a wooden trunk- very 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'- and went into the wardrobe to put the dress on. When I came out, River took one look at me and grinned. A nice, kind of 'appreciative' grin. "You need to put your hair up," he said. So I dug around in a small box of cheap jewelry until I had gathered a handful of bobby pins. Then River appeared behind me, and, with his long, tan fingers, started lifting my hair, one strand at a time, twirling it and pinning it until it was all piled on my head in a graceful twist. My hair was thick with dried salt from sitting on the beach, and tangled from the wind, but River made it look pretty damn elegant, all things considered. When he was done, I went over and looked at myself in one of the long dressing mirrors- it was warped and stained with age, but I could still see half my face pretty well.