Wayward Son

I'd give him all that I am. I'd give him all that I was. I'd open up a vein. I'd tie our hearts together, chamber by chamber.

Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy. And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed. There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.

But it was a mistake thinking of that as an end. There is no end. Bad things happen, and then they stop, but they keep on wreaking havoc inside of people.

Can I?” he asks. Can you what, Simon? Kiss me? Kill me? Break my heart? I touch him like he’s made of butterfly wings. “You don’t have to ask.” I say it loud enough that he’ll hear me, over everything.

Go ahead and shoot me. This isn't my favourite shirt.

Sometimes Simon kisses me like it’s the end of the world, and I worry he might believe that it is.

Ha! Does Agatha know we're coming?" "It'll be a surprise!" Penny says. "Surprise!" Baz singsongs. "It's your ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend and that girl you never liked very much!

Something is very wrong with Bunce. She's collapsed in the back seat like a dead rabbit. But I can't really focus on it because of the sun and also the wind and because I'm very busy making a list. Things I hate, a list: 1. The sun. 2. The wind. 3. Penelope Bunce, when she hasn't got a plan. 4. American sandwiches. 5. America. 6. The band, America. Which I didn't know about an hour ago. 7. Kansas, also a band I've recently become acquainted with. 8. Kansas, the state. Which isn't that far from Illinois, so it must be wretched. 9. The State of Illinois, for fucking certain. 10. The sun. In my eyes. 11. The wind in my hair. 12. Convertible automobiles. 13. Myself, most of all. 14. My soft heart. 15. My foolish optimism. 16. The words "road" and "trip" when said together with any enthusiasm. 17. Being a vampire, if we're being honest. 18. Being a vampire in a fucking convertible. 19. A deliriously thirsty vampire in a convertible at midday. In Illinois, which is apparently the brightest place on the planet. 20. The sun. Which hangs miles closer to Minooka, Illinois, than it does over London blessed England. 21. Minooka, Illinois. Which seems dreadful. 22. These sunglasses. Rubbish. 23. The fucking sun! We get it - you're very fucking bright! 24. Penelope Bunce, who came up with this idea. An idea not accompanied by a plan. Because all she cared about was seeing her rubbish boyfriend, who clearly cocked it all up. Which we all should have expected from someone from Illinois, land of the damned - a place that manages to be both hot and humid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don't expect it to also be humid. That's what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!

What eats you?” He raises an eyebrow, giving me a taste of my own medicine. “Existential despair.

The wind is blowing Simon’s hair straight, and he’s squinting—from the sun and from all the smiling. “What!” he shouts at me again. “You’re so beautiful!” I shout back. He turns the radio down, so now there’s just the wind and the engine noise to shout over. “What’d you say?!” “Nothing!

I've loved him through worse. I've loved him hopelessly... So what's a little less hope?

I didn't tell him, I never told him. Not in a way that he believed. Not in a way that he could let in and hold on to. Everything he was to me. That he was everything. Simon, Simon . . . You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I'd wake up every morning and tell myself . . . I'd tell myself . . . "You live in fear! In denial!" Simon is on the ground. His wing is bent the wrong way. His blood is red and abundant. It smells like brown butter. His hair is a mess, his face is in the sand. He doesn't know how much I love him. He's never really heard it. I'd wake up every morning and tell myself . . . "Simon . . . love . . . get up. We still have to save Agatha." Simon is on the ground. This will end in flames.

If you can't trust people with nose rings to be open-minded, who's left?

A relationship isn't about the end. It's about being together every step of the way.

Fighting doesn’t feel good anymore. It feels like breaking something because you don’t know how to fix it.

How have I lived through so many happy endings without ever learning how to save the day?

Crowley, if this is what it takes to keep Simon in my arms—gunshots and Quiet Zones and high-speed chases—I’m here for it. I’ll swear to it. I’ve found my vocation.

He’s coming into himself. And I’m coming apart.

He's lovely. A bit of a sad mess. Dull and pale and rough around the edges. But still so lovely.

My favorite part of kissing Simon when he's cold is the way he goes warm in my hands. Like I'm the living campfire. Like I'm the one who lives. I warm him in my arms, and then he warms me in his. He gives it all back to me.

Baz has stopped glaring at Penelope and started glaring at me. “What on earth are you drinking, Snow?” “A Unicorn Frappuccino.” He frowns. “Why’s it called that—does it taste like lavender?” “It tastes like strawberry Dip Dab,” I say. Penny’s grimacing at Baz. “For heaven’s snakes, Basil, I can’t believe you know what unicorns taste like.” “Shut up, Bunce, it was sustainably farmed.” “Unicorns can talk!” “They’re only capable of small talk; it’s not like eating a dolphin.” Baz takes my Frappuccino and sucks down a huge gulp. “Disgusting.” He hands it back to me. “Not like a unicorn at all.

We literally have three “pickup trucks” in all of England, but here they’re everywhere. What is it that Americans have to pick up that the rest of the world doesn’t?

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

I usually am right. It’s just good sense to go through life assuming that I am. It’s the law of averages. Better to assume I’m always right and occasionally be wrong than to fiddle about doubting myself all the time, saying to everyone, “Yes, but what do you think?

It might not be the circle of life,” Lamb says. “But it is the food chain. I didn’t see you feeling sorry for that pig we had for lunch. Or that rabbit you had for dessert. Everything eats something else.” I swing my head towards him. “What eats you?” He raises an eyebrow, giving me a taste of my own medicine. “Existential despair.

Trauma affects memory, my therapist said. Your brain closes off painful corridors. “That sounds good to me,” I told her. “Thank you, brain.

I don’t really fit in here,” she said to me one night. “But I don’t fit in any better anywhere else.” It was like she pulled the feeling right out of my heart.

Aeroplanes don't stop being aeroplanes when they're on the ground.

Iowa looks exactly like Illinois. I am not sure why they bothered to separate them. Just an endless stretch of motorway and pig farms. (There is a distinction: Iowa smells more like pig shit than Illinois.)