I wasn’t just her second choice, which I’d convinced myself I could live with: I was a cameo, a walk-on role, a guest star, and it killed me that it had taken me this long to realize it.
And my first immediate thought, because I’m an idiot, was how much I’d make her work if she decided she wanted me back. That a month from now or a year from now or a decade from now, Grace Town would walk back into my life after paying off her debt to her dead boyfriend, after feeling all the pain his death deserved, and I’d make her chase me the way I’d chased her. She’d come to my house in the middle of a thunderstorm with a boom box held over her head, and I’d finally get to see her sopping wet, drenched in rain, the way I’d wanted to from the beginning. And she’d fling herself into my arms and, my God, it would be so grand.
But as I watched her watch me, I knew it would never happen. As I looked at her looking into my eyes, I realized how very little I knew about her. All the things I’d been desperate to ask her about, to know about her—her childhood, her mom, her future—I’d never gotten around to asking.
Grace waited for me to speak, but I didn’t, because everything there was to say had already been said a hundred times before, and I was tired, so tired, of saying the same things over and over again and them making no difference. So she put her hands on top of her head and exhaled loudly. And then she did something I wasn’t expecting. Grace Town smiled. It was a smile that stretched across her whole face, crinkled the corners of her eyes. The sunlight caught her irises and made them almost crystal clear and my heart trembled at how achingly beautiful she was and how much I hated her for not being mine.
“You’re an extraordinary collection of atoms, Henry Page,” she said, and her smile stretched wider and she laughed that silent laugh that’s more of an exhale through the nose than anything else. Then she put her arms down by her side and pursed her lips and nodded once, her smile entirely faded.
And as I watched her stand and leave—again, again, again—I finally understood that I loved a multiverse of Graces.
The flesh-and-blood her, the version of her that still wore Dom’s unwashed clothes and slept in unwashed sheets and ran on her injured leg to make sure it didn’t heal too quickly. A tithe of guilt paid in pain. The only justice she could offer him; the only redemption she could offer herself.
The version she’d been, the ethereal creature that now existed only in photographs and half-remembered fantasies.
And the Kintsukuroi dream girl, stitched together with gold seams. The version that was clean and whole and dressed in floral, backlit by the setting sun. The version that hummed the Pixies and the Strokes as we slow danced together under string lights. The one I helped put back together.
A multiverse bound up in the skin of a single girl.
I opened her contribution to the Post. It was a piece of paper that’d been torn into little pieces and stuck back together with a patchwork of clear tape on the back. All the little jagged scars that broke up the text had been gone over with gold ink. Pablo Neruda’s poem, Kintsukuroi in paper form. Lola must’ve given it back to Grace, bless her. La. A devil and an angel in one. The title, “I do not love you,” had been circled in gold, which I expected to hurt like hell, but it didn’t. So I read it again, for the last time.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I can’t lie to you and tell you that standing in front of someone and offering them your soul and having them reject you is not gonna be one of the worst things that ever happens to you. You will wonder for days or weeks or months or years afterward what it is about you that was so wrong or broken or ugly that they couldn’t love you the way you loved them. You will look for all the reasons inside yourself that they didn’t want you and you will find a million.
Maybe it was the way you looked in the mornings when you first woke up and hadn’t showered. Maybe it was the way you were too available, because despite what everyone says, playing hard to get is still attractive.
Some days you will believe that every atom of your being is defective somehow. What you need to remember, as I remembered as I watched Grace Town leave, is that you are extraordinary.
Grace Town was a chemical explosion inside my heart. She was a star that’d gone supernova. For a few fleeting moments there was light and heat and pain, brighter than a galaxy, and in her wake she left nothing but darkness. But the death of stars provides the building blocks of life. We’re all made of star stuff. We’re all made of Grace Town.
“My redemption,” I said to Lola as I slipped her the envelope from Grace.
She opened it. She read it. She grinned.
THE REMAINDER OF the semester went like this: One week later, when I woke up in the morning, Grace Town was not the first thing I thought about when I opened my eyes, but the second. I don’t remember what the first thing was exactly, only that she hadn’t been it. She didn’t split through me like lightning, searing my veins. The infection had begun to clear. The wound was healing.
I knew then that I would survive.
And I did.
If you thought The Westland Redemption turned out to be a resounding success, then you haven’t been paying attention. The document that went to the printer (two hours early, might I add) was somewhere between catastrophe and disaster on the Shit-o-Meter. It was the Frankenstein’s monster of student publications, which—to be honest—aren’t exactly known for their style and clarity in the first place.
It was clearly assembled by a dozen or so people who had differing ideas of what the end product should look like. Buck’s hand-drawn sketches clashed with Lola’s sleek design, and I hadn’t had enough time to edit all the juniors’ copy, so most of their work read like postmodern interpretations of classical grammar at best. But it was big, and it was bold, and its orange, black, and white color scheme was eye-catching, and the drawings were beautiful, and the confessions were funny and stupid and heartbreaking, and Lola had organized it all in such a way that, yes, the more I looked at it, yes, it was actually pretty damn good. Yes, there was real redemption there.
Hink didn’t even know we’d made our deadline until I approved the proofs four days later. Once he found out, he proceeded to flip the eff out because we’d violated every rule in the charter. Turns out almost all the sins teenagers want absolved involve sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, and Lola and I had to petition the PTA to hold a vote on whether the newspaper could even be released.
The deciding vote ended up coming down to Mr. Hotchkiss. Luckily, a container of lemon curd cupcakes had appeared on his desk two hours before the hearing and put him in an abnormally good mood. He voted in our favor, and kept a framed copy of Sadie’s handwritten apology on his desk for the remainder of senior year.
The Westland Redemption was distributed the next day, at which point it proceeded to blow Kyle’s legacy out of the water, by which I mean at least 60 percent of the student body picked up a copy. A 15 percent spike in circulation—enough to convince Hink and Valentine that, despite my wantonness, I’d redeemed myself enough to remain in charge of the newspaper for at least one more issue.
When Lola and Georgia broke up without warning or explanation, Murray and I dragged her kicking and screaming through the pain, just as she’d dragged us. We made her sing Christmas carols and drink eggnog. We made her put on a hat and scarf and gloves and drive with us (and Maddy) to the mall to get our picture with Santa. We made her watch The Nightmare Before Christmas on Christmas Eve, her small body wedged between ours under the covers of my bed. We made her better. Not quickly. Not by a long shot. But we helped.
After Christmas, my parents announced that they’d decided to take separate vacations. One to Canada, the other to Mexico, but this time there was no unwanted pregnancy at the end to bring them back together. When he returned home, Dad packed his things . . . and moved all the way into his ca
rpentry workshop in the backyard. They still ate breakfast together every morning.
And gradually, as her tithe was paid, the gold seams in Grace Town began to appear. After Christmas break, her limp grew less noticeable, until she stopped walking with her cane altogether. She started driving to school. Sometimes she’d wear a piece of Dom’s clothing: a knit cap, a necklace, a jacket. But mostly, she wore her own things. Slowly, as she worked off her imagined debt, she let herself be redeemed. Justice had been served.
We came unstuck from each other’s lives. We deleted each other off Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat. We signed custody of Ricky Martin Knupps II over to Ryan, who renamed him “Fish Fish” and loved him more than we ever could. All the ties that had connected us slowly snapped and healed, until we were separate entities once more. Until I remembered her only when an ache of longing throbbed through me: on New Year’s Eve when the fireworks went off, when I watched movies by myself in the dark, but mostly when I woke up in the morning and she wasn’t there.
And all the while I loved her, just as she loved him.
In secret, between the shadow and the soul.
NOTES
THE VERY CORE of this book was born from the July 11, 2014, Nerve article by Drake Baer called “This Is Your Brain on a Break Up.” In particular, the interview with Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at Yeshiva University, directly inspired Sadie and her career.
Grace’s fishpond in the abandoned train station wouldn’t exist without the November 30, 2013, Renegade Travels article “Exotic Fish Take Over Abandoned Bangkok Mall Basement.” The station itself is loosely based on a beautiful, ghostly, disused one in Sydney, which I totally never ever broke into.
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,” which Henry references in Chapter 7, is a quote from “The Old Astronomer” by Sarah Williams.
The comedy sketch starring Ricky Gervais and Liam Neeson mentioned in Chapter 9 is from “Episode One” of BBC Two’s Life’s Too Short.
Henry’s PowerPoint is based on several hilarious and persuasive examples from Tumblr (“Why You Should Let Me Touch Your Butt,” “Why You Should Let Me Touch Your Boobs,” etc.). However, it draws most heavily from one called “Why We Should Do Sex Things,” which I first saw on Imgur; I can claim very little of its brilliance. To the anonymous girl who wrote the original: I sincerely hope it got you laid.
The line that Henry’s father says about Grace in Chapter 17— “Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty”—is a quote by Charles Baudelaire.
I don’t know who originally wrote “Stories with happy endings are just stories that haven’t finished yet,” but I first heard a version of it in Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
“If love could’ve saved you, you would have lived forever,” the inscription on Dom’s grave, is, as best I can tell, by no author I can easily identify.
“If you were a carrot, you’d be a good carrot” and “Purple, because aliens don’t wear hats” are ripped straight from the glorious cesspit that is the internet, as are, I’m sure, a dozen other offhand pop culture references I’ve failed to properly attribute here (my references are out of control).
Please don’t hold my wantonness against me.
WITH THANKS
TO MY AGENT, Catherine Drayton, for being my first and fiercest ally. If I could list all the synonyms for grateful and fortunate here, it still wouldn’t be enough to accurately convey my thanks.
To the rest of the staff at InkWell Management, particularly Masie Cochran, who read this book first, and William Callahan, for editorial advice that was the very definition of invaluable. Also to the foreign rights squad of Liz Parker, Lyndsey Blessing, and Alexis Hurley, for being so damn good at what you do.
To my editor, Stacey Barney, for, like, literally everything. Your insight, your fervor, the depth of your love for Henry and Grace. You make it super hard not to believe in fate and soul mates when my book found its soul mate in you.
Also to Kate Meltzer, for your tireless support, and to the rest of the team at Putnam and Penguin Random House, for welcoming me so enthusiastically to the family.
To Laura Harris from Penguin Australia, for breathing life into Murray and sharing my passion for Taylor Swift.
To Emma Matthewson from Hot Key in the UK—like I said in our emails, ten-year-old me went into cardiac arrest the moment an offer from you arrived in my inbox!
To Mary Pender and Kassie Evashevski from UTA, for handling the film rights so brilliantly.
To the readers of my early work who told me I was good when I definitely, categorically wasn’t: Cara Faagutu, Renee Martin, Alysha Morgan, Sarah Francis, Kirra Worth, Jacqueline Payne, Danielle Green, and Sally Roebuck. You hardly know how much I needed and appreciated your (terribly misplaced at the time) confidence.
To the whole team at Arc, but especially Lyndal Wilson, for making me a far better writer (and putting up with my frequent shenanigans/disregard for the charter).
To Twitter and Team Maleficent, for being my unwavering cheerleaders: Samantha Shannon, Claire Donnelly, Katherine Webber, Lisa Lueddecke Catterall, and Leiana Leatutufu.
A second shout-out here to the incomparable, indispensible Katie Webber. You lead by example in showing me that the impossible was possible if you only worked hard enough. I am unfailingly proud of you and constantly awed by your dedication to what you do.
To my Cowper Crew, for supporting me through the writing of this book: Baz Compton, Geoff Metzner, but especially Tamsin Peters. Thank you for cups of tea, study corner, chicken soup when I was sick (frequently), and feeding me when I was flat broke (even more frequently). Look how far your little parasite has come!
To my lovely grandmother, Diane Kanowski, who will never read this book because it’s far too scandalous, but whom I’m grateful to regardless! Our hundreds of library visits when I was a kid were instrumental in fostering my love of books.
To my parents, Phillip and Sophie Batt, for everything, forever. Putting up with me as a teenager is starting to pay off, right? Right? To Mum in particular: there’s a line in Pierce Brown’s Morning Star that says, “Mother is the spine in me. The iron.” I think the same of you.
Above all, thank you to my little sisters, Shanaye and Chelsea, for a hundred midnight drives, Skittles and Pepsi Max, songs played on repeat, not telling Mum that one time I quit my job to write, loving my characters more than I do, and generally being outstanding human beings.
You are my favourite people in the world and this book is unequivocally and wholeheartedly for you.
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