“You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys."
Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other.”
“I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said.
Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?"
"Maybe I dreamt you," he said.
"Thanks for the straight teeth, then," Adam replied.”
“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.
Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.”
“Blue,” he warned, but his voice was chaotic. This close, his throat was scented with mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat, and Gansey, just Gansey.
She said, “I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.”
“Don't tell the others," Gansey said.
"I'm dead," Noah replied, "not stupid.”
“I'm glad you misdialed."
"Well. Easy mistake to make," she said. Might do it again." A very, very long pause. She opened her mouth to fill it, then changed her mind and didn't. She was shivering again, even though she wasn't cold with the pillow on her legs.
"Shouldn't," Gansey said finally. "But I hope you do.”
“As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan’s eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practiced but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really:
See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes.”
“Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him.”
“There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome.
One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment , but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself.
Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some.”
“Adam finally sat down on one of the pews. Laying his cheek against the smooth back of it, he looked at Ronan. Strangely enough, Ronan belonged here, too, just as he had at the Barns. This noisy, lush religion had created him just as much as his father's world of dreams; it seemed impossible for all of Ronan to exist in one person. Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him.
The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he'd been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.”
“He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that.
I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.”
“It kills Dittleys and does terrible things to my friend."
"YOUR DEAD FRIEND."
"That's not his fault. Why didn't you say you could see him?"
"I DIDN'T SAY I COULD SEE YOU, EITHER."
"But I'm not dead."
"BUT YOU ARE PRETTY SHORT.”
“Behind him, he heard Ronan say, "I like the way you losers thought Instagram before first aid. Fuck off.”
“I’m going in,” Gansey said as Ronan sat down on the step beside Adam. As Gansey shut the door behind him, he heard Adam say, “I don’t want to talk,” and Ronan reply, “The fuck would I talk about?”
“In the hall stood Richard Campbell Gansey III in his school uniform and overcoat and scarf and gloves, looking like someone from another world. Behind him was Ronan Lynch, his damn tie knotted right for once and his shirt tucked in.
Humiliation and joy warred furiously inside Adam.
Gansey strode between the pews as Adam's father stared at him. He went directly to the bench, straight up to the judge. Now that he stood directly beside Adam, not looking at him, Adam could see that he was a little out of breath. Ronan, behind him, was as well. they had run.
For him.”
“What do we do now?" Gansey asked.
From the other room, Calla bellowed, "GO BUY US PIZZA. WITH EXTRA CHEESE, RICHIE RICH."
Blue said, "I think she's starting to like you.”
“It should have been impossible. No one should have been able to dream any of these thing, much less all of them. But Adam had seen what Ronan could do. He'd read the dreamt will and ridden in the dreamt Camaro and been terrified by the dreamt night terror.
It was possible that there were two gods in this church.”
“Desire and dread lay right next to each other in his heart, each sharpening the other.”
“It was amazing that she and Ronan didn’t get along better, because they were different brands of the same impossible stuff.”
“What an impossible and miraculous and hideous thing this was. An ugly plan hatched by an ugly boy now dreamt into ugly life. From dream to reality. How appropiate it was that Ronan, left to his own devices, manifested beautiful cars and beautiful birds and tenderhearted brothers, while Adam, when given the power, manifested a filthy string of perverse murders.”
“Casually, out of the view of Ronan, making sure Adam was still sleeping, Gansey dangled his hand between the driver's seat and the door. Palm up, fingers stretched back to Blue.
This was not allowed.
He knew it was not allowed, by rules he himself had set... She would not see the gesture, anyway. She would ignore it if she did. His heart hummed.
Blue touched his fingertips.
Just this--
He pinched her fingers lightly, just for a moment, and then he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. His chest felt warm.
This was not allowed.
Ronan had not seen; Adam was still sleeping. The only casualty was his pulse.
-Page 36 <3”
“Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.”
“Gansey stepped in then, putting his phone neatly into his pocket, fetching out his keys instead. There was still something stretched thin about his expression. He looked, in fact, like he had in the cave, his face streaked and unfamiliar. It was so strange to see him without his Richard Campbell Gansey III guise on in public that Blue couldn't stop staring at his face. No — it wasn't his face. It was the way he stood, his shoulder shrugged, chin ducked, gaze from below uncertain eyebrows.
"SHE WAS ALL RIGHT," Jesse assured him.
"My head knew that," Gansey said. "But the rest of me didn't.”
“Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn't forget it on mornings like this one—fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish.”
“Ronan was angry-every one of his emotions that wasn't happiness was anger.”
“I wasn't talking to you, Lynch. I need someone with a soul.”
“Her aura is like yours—it's blue," he said. "The clairvoyant aura!"
"Is it?" She was going to be extremely annoyed if this was how she had gotten her name—like naming a puppy Fluffy.”
“Adam retreated to sit beside Mary as Ronan stretched out on the pew, rubbing out the dingy plan with the legs of his jeans. Something about his stillness on the pew and the funereal quality of the light reminded Adam of the effigy of Glendower they'd seen at the tomb. A king, sleeping. Adam couldn't imagine, though, the strange, wild kingdom that Ronan might rule.
"Stop watching me," Ronan said, though his eyes were closed.”
“There was something unfamiliar about him. Something ferocious about his eyes, some sort of bite in his faint smile. Something altogether hectic and unsettled. She stood on the ledge of his smile and looked over the edge.”
“He was so much more dangerous when he wasn't angry.”
“You are afraid of me?” Reed asks me, sounding unpleasantly surprised.
“Of course I’m afraid of you. You’re menacing, you’re overbearing, you’re arrogant, and if you don’t see that, then you can just add high to the list,” I say, using my fingers to tick off his shortcomings.”
“Life isn’t worth living, unless you have someone worth dying for.”
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
“So if someone is thinking about me, then that's the place I go ?”
“Girls will get together just to get together. Guys need an activity as an excuse. Otherwise it’s too homo for them to handle.”
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