E. Lockhart

Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt?
Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom?
It is hard for her to tell the difference.

“But do you even want to see the whole picture?” Gat asks. “Could you even understand it?”

I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.

And then I don’t.

I do.

And then I don’t.

“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”

“Half the time I hate myself for all the things I’ve done,” says Gat. “But the thing that makes me really messed up is the contradiction: when I’m not hating myself, I feel righteous and victimized. Like the world is so unfair.”

“I’m more than okay there, I’m fantastic. I love Windemere because you built it specially for Mummy. I want to raise my own children there and my children’s children. You are so excellent, Granddad. You are the patriarch and I revere you. I am so glad I am a Sinclair. This is the best family in America.”

I want to die, sometimes, my head hurts so much. I keep writing you all my brightest thoughts but I never say the dark ones, even though I think them all the time. So I am saying them now. Even if you do not answer, I will know somebody heard them, and that, at least, is something

Silence is a protective coating over pain.”

And here, I have killed them.

It doesn’t matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love.

So much

in love

that equally desperate measures

must be taken.

We are Sinclairs.

No one is needy.

No one is wrong.