“Hark,” he said, his tone very dry. “What stone through yonder window breaks?”
Kami yelled up at him, “It is the east, and Juliet is a jerk!”
Jared abandoned Shakespeare and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Throwing a pebble,” said Kami defensively. “Uh… and I’ll pay for the window.”
Jared vanished and Kami was ready to start shouting again, when he reemerged with the pebble clenched in his fist. “This isn’t a pebble! This is a rock.”
“It’s possible that your behaviour has inspired some negative feelings that caused me to pick a slightly overlarge pebble,” Kami admitted.”
“What the hell is going on?" demanded Kami's dad, advancing with his black eyes snapping. Jared blurted, "My intentions are honourable."
Kami sat up straight in her bed and stared in Jared's direction. "Are you completely crazy?" she wanted to know. "This isn't the eighteenth century. How do you think that's going to help?"
"Well, I mean," Jared said, back against the wall like a cornered animal. "When we're older. I mean-"
"Please shut up," Kami begged.
"I agree with Kami," said Dad. "When you're in an abyss-like hole, quit digging.”
“One of the lambs fixed its attention on Jared. “Baa,” it flirted.
“Boo,” said Jared.
“Oh my God, Jared. Don’t tough-talk the lambs.”
"It was giving me a funny look.”
“You’re crazy,” said her best friend, Angela, as the bell rang to signal five minutes before the first class on the first day back at school.
“They said that about all the great visionaries.”
“You know who else they said it about?” Angela demanded. “All the actual crazy people.”
“Why are you putting on lip gloss, my daughter?” Dad asked. “Trip to the library? Trip to the nunnery? I hear the nunneries are nice this time of year”
…
“Is this true, Kami? Are you going out on a date?” Dad asked tragically. “Wearing that? Wouldn’t you fancy a shapeless cardigan instead? You rock a shapeless cardigan, honey.”
“Angela spared a glare for Kami, and then resumed her marathon glaring session at Jared. 'It's too weird. I'm going to call you Carl.'
Jared scowled. 'I don't want you to call me Carl.'
'That's interesting, Carl,' said Angela, cheering up.”
“Listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what any of this means. But I know this much. It doesn’t matter. You’re not one of them. You never were. You’re not theirs. You’re mine.”
“The Lynburns built this town on their blood and bones."
"That was their first mistake," Jared said. "They should've built a city on rock and roll.”
“Kami said, "I want you to go in there and vamp that receptionist."
"What?" Ash said blankly.
"You know," Kami said. "Dazzle her with your charms. Rock her world. Go on."
[...] "What," Ash said, "all of us?"
"Do you want to stand around trying to guess if she likes pretty boys or rough trade?" Jared asked, gesturing lazily from Ash to himself.
"Excuse me, what did you just call yourself?" Ash demanded. "No, wait a second, I don't care. What did you just call me?”
“A leather jacket,” Kami said as he shrugged into it. “Aren’t you trying a little too hard to play into certain bad boy clichés?”
“Nah”, said Jared. “You’re thinking of black leather. Black leather’s for bad boys. It’s all in the color. You wouldn’t think I was a bad boy if I was wearing a pink leather jacket.”
“That’s true,” Kami said. “What I would think of you, I do not know. So what does brown leather mean, then?”
“I’m going for manly,” Jared said. “Maybe a little rugged.”
“It’s bits of dead cow; don’t ask it to perform miracles.”
“If I wasn't going to be a world-famous journalist and if I didn't have such respect for truth and justice, I could be an amazing master criminal.”
“I read books, but I do it because I want to - because it's like an escape in my head, like being with you.”
“Your soul is like the souls of a thousand monkeys on crack, all smushed together.”
“Put the jerk in the south wing, you won't see him for weeks at a time. Or lock him in the attic. The law will not be on your side, but literary precedent will.”
“Boys. Listen up. We are going out for a girls’ night, where there will be dancing.”
Kami did an illustrative shimmy. Angela looked resigned.
Jared looked amused. “What was that?”
“You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching, Jared,” Kami informed him.
“Have you considered that perhaps nobody’s watching because they’re too embarrassed for you?”
“Fine,” said Kami, grinning at him. “Be a hater of dances. Be a hater of joy. I don’t care. You’re not invited!”
“Jared told her he used to be an exotic dancer in San Francisco.'
'My body is a gift from God,' Jared said gravely. 'Except for my hips, which are clearly a gift from the devil.”
“Kami'd always retold her fairy tales to make the fair maidens braver and more self-sufficient, but she had never had any real objection to the handsome prince.”
“What's going on with you? Jared asked out of the blue.
Beginning a new era of journalistic history, Kami told him, sending her cheer through their connection. Also, to be perfectly honest, Angela and I were slapping our asses.
As one does.”
“Hi," Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian…"Can you tell me where I could find the books on Satanism?"
Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did not have to telephone Kami's parents.”
“Nothing else ever mattered to me, and you weren’t even real. All I ever wanted was you.”
“Jared had his back to the wall, which Kami thought was a reflex when he was uncomfortable. She wanted to shield him. “He was doing some—Zen jogging,” she claimed.
Jared flicked her an incredulous glance. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Zen jogging. I wasn’t wearing that many clothes because—that’s part of the process. You’re meant to commune with the elements. Normally, I wouldn’t have worn my jeans, but I put them on because I know the English are a modest people.”
“She clenched her fist in his T-shirt, put her other arm around those too-broad, too-real shoulders. When he tried to pull away, she held on tight. Kami felt the surrender in his mind a moment before he laid his face in the curve of her neck. The whole world was so real it hurt.
Kami whispered into Jared's hair, "I'm always on your side.”
“How do you deal with it?" Kami asked Jared. "The laughing at nothing and occasionally stopping dead in your tracks."
"I have a system where when I stop, I lean casually against something," Jared told her. "It makes people think I'm a bad boy. Or possibly that I have a bad back.”
“Hark," he said, his tone very dry. "What stone through yonder window breaks?”
“I can try to wheedle information out of people," Holly offered. "For which I'll need a lower-cut top.”
“His desperation and misery swept her up like a storm capturing the sea. She turned her mind to even these feelings, because they were his, like his terrified rage in the lift when they had first met, being wrapped in his arms in the cold well, being dazzled by his wonder at the woods and her home and her. Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song.
I love you, Kami told him, and cut.”
“And about that," he continued. "Now that Kami and I have met, she likes me better than you. So you can leave.”
“He punched me in the face," Ash said, who understandably did not seem to find the situation humorous at all. "And then he yelled at me for sleeping with our personal trainer!"
"I was told breakup scenes were a good way to distract people," Jared said with beautiful simplicity.
"Ash looked so surprised," Holly said. "He had no idea what was going on. He said, 'I didn't sleep with our personal trainer! We don't even have a personal trainer!'"
Angela and Holly giggled. Ash held the back of his hand to his bleeding mouth and glared.
Jared was still grinning like a maniac. "In that case," he told Ash solemnly, "I will consider taking you back.”
“Sorry-in-the-Vale, Sorriest River, Crying Pools," said Jared. "Is the quarry called Really Depressed Quarry?”
“My current verdict would be: Crazy Eyes. Nice Ass."
"I think I want that on my tombstone.”
“Sybilla poked her head inside. “We should go down to the hall now or risk Alysandir’s displeasure.”
“I would be consumed by you,' she said, and blinked her eyes furiously when she felt them fill with tears. 'You would sap all the energy and all the joy from me. You would put out all the fire of my vitality.'
'Give me a chance to fan the flames of that fire,' he said, 'and to nurture your joy.”
“He knows that for all the undeserved bounty of his life, she will always be there, at the edge of his vision, to remind him of all the things he can never have.”
“If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat.”
“That was the only decision there was once upon a time: what to do with the night.”
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