99 Days

maybe it’s just the constant ache of loneliness, but running into Gabe makes me feel like something’s about to happen,

a million paperback copies of Driftwood available for the low, low price of $6.99 plus my dignity.

Star Lake has had the air of something that used to be but isn’t anymore

I sit in bed with my arms wrapped tight around my knees and watch a documentary about Mary Shelley, who kept her husband’s heart in her dresser drawer for years after he died. I cry for a while. I hide.

It occurs to me, not for the first time, that you can never really know what anybody’s got hidden in the back of her secret heart.

“But I lost you anyway.”

“You were my best friend, Molly. You always had Patrick. But I only ever had you.”

I don’t know how I became this person, one of those girls with a lot of drama around her. A person whose romantic garbage literally fills an entire book.

“I think it’s like an hour, though, right?”