The Beauty of the End

I’ve wondered since if you can ever truly read a face. It’s too easy to see what you so desperately want to see, even if it isn’t there. I knew that.

Suddenly your whole life is like a car crash, no brakes, gaining momentum, piling up behind you. Your mistakes, missed opportunities, all the time you’ve wasted, a twisted, rusting heap of scrap metal that can’t be salvaged. Overwhelming you. Crushing you.

You know, how there are some people who have no time for small things? Pettiness, I mean. In the way they let things go - because whatever huge, life-changing thing happened to them gave them a perspective most of us can't ever have.

You can play the part for so long, wear the mask, say what people expect you to say. Fight for as long as there is air in your lungs. Fly if you have wings. But you can never be free from someone who won't let you go.

I was fourteen when I fell in love with a goddess. Goddesses have that effect, even on teenagers.

It was one of many times I tried to save her. But by the time I did, it was too late.

That’s the trouble with you young people.” Saying young as though it was a bad thing. “You’re in too darn much of a hurry to notice.” “Notice what, exactly?” “The difference,” she’d replied slowly, as if I were particularly stupid, “between what people want you to see, and what’s real.

But there’s that thing with secrets, too, how they take over your head, feeding on your every thought, growing bigger all the time until the day comes they’re so heavy you can’t walk.

I loved your world, Noah. It was a magical place, where there were stars and love, and there was hope. Hope. I don’t think you know how it is not to have that. I stole some of yours. It was beautiful, but there were too many secrets between us, and I always knew I’d have to give it back.

Something had happened to April. You can see it in her. You know, how there are people who have no time for small things? Pettiness, I mean. In the way they let things go - because whatever huge, life-changing thing happened to them gave them a perspective most of us can't ever have.