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Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.
Sarah Dessen
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Fine...a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.
Sarah Dessen
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As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.
Sarah Dessen
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Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.
Sarah Dessen
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You're wrong," I told her. "I lost that faith a long time ago." She looked at me as I said this, an expression of quiet understanding on her face. "Maybe you didn't, though," she said softly. "Lose it, I mean." "Lissa." "No, just hear me out." She looked out at the road for a second, then back at me. "Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It's been there. But you just haven't been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced... that means it's still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.
Sarah Dessen
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She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.
Sarah Dessen
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No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.
Sarah Dessen
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It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.
Sarah Dessen
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Maybe that's what you got when you stood over your grief, facing it finally. A sense of its depths, its area, the distance across, and the way over or around it, whichever you chose in the end.
Sarah Dessen
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“In Truth,” I said, “there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.” “How do you win?” he asked. “That,” I said, “is such a boy question.
Sarah Dessen
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Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.
Sarah Dessen
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You can't act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.
Sarah Dessen
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For once, you believed in yourself. You believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.
Sarah Dessen
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I drove off, with my friends watching me go, all of them grouped on Lissa's hood. As I pulled onto the road, I glanced into the rearview and saw them: they were waving, hands moving through the air, their voices loud, calling out after me. The square of that mirror was like a frame, holding this picture of them saying good-bye, pushing me forward, before shifting gently out of sight, inch by fluid inch, as I turned away.
Sarah Dessen
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Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.
Sarah Dessen
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My agent is so totally honest, which is just what every writer needs. She won't let me sell a crappy book, even if I want to.
Sarah Dessen
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You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.
Sarah Dessen
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She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.
Sarah Dessen
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I listened for the voice I knew so well, the one I always heard at the beginning. Good girl, Macy! You're doing great! You know the first steps are the hardest part! They were. Sometimes I felt so out of sync, it was all could do not to quit after a few strides. But I kept on, as I did now. I had to, to get to the next part, this part, where I finally caught up with Wes, my shadow aligning itself with his, an dhe turned to look at me, pushing his hair our of his eyes.
Sarah Dessen
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This was just one night, one chance to vary and see where it took me. The fireflies were probably already out: maybe it wasn’t just a season or a time but a whole world I’d forgotten. I’d never know until I stepped out into it. So I did.
Sarah Dessen
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Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying. "You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.
Sarah Dessen
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After all with me & Marshall, it had never been about words or conversation, where there was too much to be risked or lost. Here, though, in the quiet pressed against each other, this felt familiar to me. And it was nice to let someone get close again, even if it was just for a little while.
Sarah Dessen
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But I'd long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.
Sarah Dessen
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But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.
Sarah Dessen
