Meg Wolitzer

The death girls rushed through their days, impatient. They went to classes out of guilt only; the work hardly interested them. It was the nights that were exciting.

They all agreed that when you died, that was it, total stoppage. The thought of death swelled in them night after night.

Death, usually such a divider, was the thing that held them together.

It must be depressing, Claire thought, to work in a supermarket. The foods people selected told a great deal about their lives, about the emptiness of their lives.

Until there is no longer the possibility of sadness, of isolation, there can be no gravity. We all float by, rootless, taking clumsy astronaut steps and calling it progress.

Wasn’t that a universal fantasy—trying to guess what would happen after you died, how your loved ones would react? In a moment of thrilling self-pity, doesn’t everyone try to imagine solemn friends and family at graveside?

Claire sometimes wondered if her parents really loved her. She supposed that they must, in that perfunctory, parental way that is taken for granted by children, but real love, in Claire’s mind, required something additional.

It was funny how many of the phrases that came to mind when thinking of his own life were somehow sea-related. Her interest had ebbed. They were both drowning in their sorrow. He had sunk lower than ever before. The vocabulary of the ocean seemed tailored to loss.

There was supposed to be nothing as good as freedom. But what if your natural environment was captivity to begin with? Where did that leave you?

If you put yourself in a perpetual state of mourning, then nothing could come up from behind and surprise you. You were prepared for everything—telegrams, landslides, avalanches, apocalypse.