—ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWN

 

 

TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW   /    Gabrielle Zevin

 

 

He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.

 

She was pretty all the time, but she was beautiful in love.

 

“Promise me, we won’t ever do this again. Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.”

 

She had, he thought, one of the world’s best laughs. The kind of laugh where a person didn’t feel that he was being laughed at. 

 

But to find someone you wanted to talk to for 609 hours—that was rare.

 

It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.

 

How do you preserve what’s impossible to preserve?

 

He had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by

living in the future.

 

How strange and beautiful human beings are. And how fragile.

 

It was frankly embarrassing how much his approval still meant to her. 

 

The best part of this moment, he thought, is that everything is still possible.

 

“You have no right to be this happy.”

 

Beauty, after all, is almost always a matter of angles and resolve.

 

No one Same felt, had ever loved him except those who had been obligated to love him.

 

“Why make anything if you don’t believe it could be great?”

 

--“I’m not good at showing up places where I’m not wanted.”

--“It isn’t about you. Just show up.”

 

“Always remember, Sadie; life is very long, unless it is not.”

 

Adults always thought they could fix children’s problems.

 

Alice refused to lose even one more day of her life to malady.

 

Sadie knew she was dressing for her funeral, so she wore a black dress, tights, Doc Martens. She wanted to look sexy. She wanted him to feel bad about what he would be missing, but she didn’t want to be obvious about it.

 

Sam was old enough to have noticed that simple things were often most expensive.

 

--“I’m going to play until the end of this life.”

--That’s a good philosophy.”

 

“You’re good at killing ghosts.”

 

Every person you knew, every person you loved even, did not need to consume you for the time to have been worthwhile.

 

Sadie knew it was easy to get addicted to the taste of your own carnage.

 

Alice, like their grandmother, had a strong distaste for life’s inevitable gray areas. 

 

In the end, they decided that there was never a good time to do anything. 

 

Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as a fortuitous bounty.

 

Humans want so much. I am glad to be a bird.

 

The boredom you speak of is what most of us call happiness.

 

There is no purity to bearing pain alone.

 

--“Is two considered many?”

--“It depends on how good the friendships are.”

 

So tell me how you see it.