The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?

There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.

“But isn’t it wonderful,” she says, “to be an idea?”

“I’m fine,” he says again.

And they both know him well enough to know it is a lie. They know about his broken heart. They’ve both coaxed him through his storms. They are the best people in his life, the ones who hold him together, or at least, who keep him from falling apart. But right now, there are too many cracks. Right now, there is a chasm between their words and his ears, their hands and his skin.

. Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.”

She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning.

To find a way, or make your own.

Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines

It’s less hostile than suspicion, more guarded than relief, and it is still wonderful, because of the knowing in it

You know,” she’d said, “they say people are like snowflakes, each one unique, but I think they’re more like skies. Some are cloudy, some are stormy, some are clear, but no two are ever quite the same.”

His parents meant well, of course, but they always told him things like Cheer up, or It will get better, or worse, It’s not that bad, which is easy to say when you’ve never had a day of rain.