Vanishing Girls

Sometimes people stop loving you. And that's the kind of darkness that never gets fixed, no matter how many moons rise again, filling the sky with a weak approximation of light.

That's what life is, pretty much: full of holes and tangles and ways to get stuck. Uncomfortable and itchy. A present you never asked for, never wanted, never chose. A present you're supposed to be excited to wear, day after day, even when you'd rather stay in bed and do nothing.

I wish that photographs were physical spaces, like tunnels; that you could crawl inside them and go back.

Funny how things can stay the same forever and then change so quickly.

I guess that's the really nice thing about disappearing: the part where people look for you and beg you to come home.

You broke my heart. I fell for you and you broke my heart. Period, done, end of story.

The funny thing about almost-dying is that afterward everyone expects you to jump on the happy train and take time to chase butterflies through grassy fields or see rainbows in puddles of oil on the highway. It’s a miracle, they’ll say with an expectant look, as if you’ve been given a big old gift and you better not disappoint Grandma by pulling a face when you unwrap the box and find a lumpy, misshapen sweater. That’s what life is, pretty much: full of holes and tangles and ways to get stuck. Uncomfortable and itchy. A present you never asked for, never wanted, never chose. A present you’re supposed to be excited to wear, day after day, even when you’d rather stay in bed and do nothing. The truth is this: it doesn’t take any skill to almost-die, or to almost-live, either.

Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, and the things you counted on get washed out from under your feet, leaving you pedaling in the air.

That's the problem with therapists: you have to pay them to say the same dumb shit other people will tell you for free.

This is it: somehow, in these pictures, the mystery of the accident is contained, and the explanation for Dara's subsequent behavior, for the silences and disappearances. Don't ask me how. I just do. If you don't understand that, I guess you've never had a sister

There's a metaphor in that somewhere—like all of life is about ending up somewhere you didn't expect, and learning to just be happy with it.

Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, and the things you counted on get washed out from under your feet, leaving you pedaling in the air. Sometimes people stop loving you. And that's the kind of darkness that never gets fixed, no matter how many moons rise again, filling the sky with a weak approximation of light.

He doesn't love me. He never loved me. All along, he's loved her.

How convenient if you could see what was wrong with people right away, if they wore their sicknesses and crimes on their skin like tattoos.

If you don't watch out, they'll grab you. They'll take you to the underworld and turn you into a bride.

Sometimes people stop loving you. And that’s the kind of darkness that never gets fixed,

We stay like that for a long time, side by side, holding hands, until the crickets, obeying the same ancient law that pulls the sun from the sky and throws the moon up after it, that strips autumn down to winter and pushes spring up afterward, obeying the law of closure and new beginnings, send their voices up from the silence, and sing.

Memory is like that, too. We build careful bridges. But they're weaker than we think.

There's something backward about living in a place so obsessed with the past; it's like everyone's given up on the idea of a future.

The windows are open, admitting the September breeze: a month that smells like notepaper and pencil shavings, autumn leaves and car oil. A month that smells like progress, like moving on.

Still more people are arriving:so many people, it makes you wonder how all of them could exist, how there can be so many individual lives and stories and needs and disappointments.

And yet in only a few hours we've managed to erase her almost entirely. All of her things - bought, received, painstakingly selected; her tastes and preferences; all the random stuff accumulated over the years - all of it sorted, trashed, or packed up in less than a day. How easily we get erased.

You see, even then, I knew. It wasn't a trick. It wasn't a show. Sometimes day and night reverse. Sometimes up goes down and down goes up, and love turns into hate, and the things you counted on get washed out from under your feet, leaving you pedaling in the air. Sometimes people stop loving you. And that's the kind of darkness that never gets fixed, no matter how many moons rise again, filling the sky with a weak approximation of light.

And for a split second I find her, silhouetted by the sky, arms outstretched like she's making snow angels in the air or simply laughing, turning in place; for a split second, she comes to me as the clouds, the sun, the wind touching my face and telling me that somehow, someday, it will be okay.

There’s a fundamental rule of the universe that goes like this: if you’re running late, you will miss your bus. You’ll also miss your bus if it’s raining or if you have somewhere really important to go, like the SATs or a driver’s test. Dara and I have a word for that kind of luck: crapdiment. Just crap smeared on top of more crap.

I hope she's alive. Even more, I believe.

Everyone has the pushed and prodded and tugged look that rich people have, like they're just giant pieces of taffy, ready to be molded.

I love you. Mom loves you. Dad loves you. That doesn't count. You guys have to love me. It's practically illegal not to. You probably just love me so you won't go to jail.

Magnetism, my chem teacher would call it. The seeking for a thing of its pair.

I don't know which is worse: that I'm home and so much is different, or that I'm home and so much feels the same.