Dear Universe
Page 24
I’ve attached the questions I have, and I’m sorry that they’re not specific to you or your college. I’m used to writing letters to a very special entity, and it’s too late to change my target audience now.
Dear Universe,
1. Does this shirt make my boobs look flat?
2. Should I wear sneakers while running, or are bare feet the soul of moving?
3. If freedom comes after high school and transcripts and SATs, what’s a girl to do with the opposite of freedom? The stuff that comes with growing up and sickness and death?
4. Can you ever bring two worlds together once and for all? Or is it a constant kneading of earth and ocean and atmosphere?
5. How many licks to the center of a lollipop?
6. Is that me I’m seeing, or is this selfie stick facing the wrong way entirely?
7. What if some questions don’t get punctuation marks?
8. What if I think he’s an exquisite specimen of boy and you pushed us together for a reason?
9. What if I didn’t really love that other boy—I just loved his skin on my skin?
10. Is one type of love just a branch of dermatology?
11. Could it be that the square root of who I’m going to be is {me right now} × {all my adventures} × {alchemy}?
12. Do I have spinach in my teeth?
13. How do we love the people we love so much we don’t always know how to love them?
14. And what does it all mean—this cardboard box covered in stars, full of things like pictures and notes? The kisses and the crying and the bellyaches from laughing, eating candy, running?
15. Do you even know how expansive you are and how infinite and petrifying?
16. Do you know that I’m coming?
17. Are you ready for me? Are you listening?
Of course you are. I’ve been here all along.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you: Danielle Burby for permission to abandon everything and write from the heart; Andrea Spooner for fighting for me in an actual war—girl vs. second book, which included the battle of pushed-back deadlines, the battle of yet another proposal, and the battle of this-draft-is-not-only-nothing-like-what-was-promised-but-nothing-like-its-previous-draft-either. Thank you to Hallie Tibbetts and everyone at LBYR for your patience over the last two years as some books were killed, other drafts were discarded, and many ideas were lost to make space for this story; Beth Ann Balalaos for suggesting crucial changes and advocating for the dignity of all characters; Peter for reading and re-reading and re-re-reading—without you I’d be crumpled in the recycling bin along with a sad draft of this book. Thank you to my loving and supportive parents, who urged me through dark days to write first and foremost for myself. And finally, gummy bears. I’ve seen your true colors, Haribo, and I’m grateful.
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