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Sometimes it is worth any amount of suffering just to prevent giving your parents the opportunity to be right.

Maureen Johnson

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Maureen Johnson
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: February 16
Author
Novelist
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Right
Sometimes
Prevent
Giving
Worth
Parents
Amount
Parent
Suffering
Opportunity

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Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.
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No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong.
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One question, I said. Did you tell me all that because you think I'm going to die? No, he said. It's because you're doing something brave, and I felt I should too. I'll take that as a yes, I said.
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Prefects. I had learned this one. Student council types, but with superpowers. They who must be obeyed.
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A pause while my mother made high-pitched sisterly devotions of gratitude.
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The kids I talk to are readers, and the craziest, the most dedicated readers you will ever see.
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I still have a whopping bad case of what you call scag magnetism. I thought i had gotten rid of it there, but it looks like scary guys still materialize from thin air in my presence. They are drawn to me. I am the North Pole, and they are the explorers of love.
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I like to talk. Talking is kind of my thing. If talking had been a sport option at Wexford, I would have been captain. But sports always have to involve running, jumping, or swinging your arms around. You don’t get PE points for the smooth and rapid movement of the jaw.
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With that, I splashed some water on my face, fixed on a smile, and stepped out. I would find Jerome. I would make him explain to me what I was missing. We would laugh, then we would kiss with tongue, and all would be well.
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Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.
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English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.
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I followed your footsteps, he said, in answer to the unspoken question. Snow makes it easy. I had been tracked, like a bear. Sorry to make you go to all that trouble, I said. I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops. A really inept bear.
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The essay I had to read was called, An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope. The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in heroic couplets. If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.
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Tell me what you want, what you really, really want, he said. Braiiinnnnssss, we said in unison.
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There is no normal. I've never met a normal person. The concept is flawed. It implies that there is only one way people are supposed to be, and that can't possible be true. Human experience is far too varied.
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What are you? I asked. I'm the Ghost of the Night Before Exams. And how long did it take you to come up with that? Jazza asked. I'm a busy man, he replied.
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Did you hear? he asked. They found another body around nine this morning. It's the Ripper, definitely. Good morning, I replied. Morning. Listen to this. The second victim.
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Spicy food and I have a close relationship—an obsessive one, in fact. If it’s spicy, I want it. I want to sweat and shake and go half blind from the searing pain . . . which, now that I put it that way, seems really suggestive. But spicy stuff is addictive. That’s a known fact of science.
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Just then, my phone started ringing. The ring must have been damaged by the water as well, so now it had a high, keening note - kind of the sound I imagine a mermaid might make if you punched her in the face.
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I have no phobias. Phobias are irrational. My fears are rational and CAREFULLY CULTIVATED, like roses.
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