For most of the nights of my life I could hear Stewart coming home late from his university studio, the brakes of his bike — they had an old VW bus, but it broke down constantly — squeaking all the way from the bridge down the street. He’d glide down the slope of their yard, under the clothesline, to the garage. Sometimes he forgot about the clothesline and almost killed himself, flying backward while the bike went on, unmanned to crash against the garage door. You’d think they would have moved the clothesline after the second time or so. But they didn’t.
“It’s not the fault of the clothesline,” Stewart explained to me one day, rubbing the red, burned spot on his neck. He’d broken his glasses again and had them taped together in the middle. “It’s about me respecting it as an obstacle.”
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 2
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