You would have thought I’d feel brittle too, being such a bitter, angry bitch. But I didn’t. I felt nothing, really, just the sense that now the circle I’d always kept small was a little smaller. Maybe Chris could be saved that easily. But not me. Never me.
– Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby, Chapter 6
The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are simple:
More than our old house, or our Wildflower Ridge place, the beach shack was my dad. I knew if he was haunting any place, it would be there, and for that reason I’d stayed away.
I’d spent so many months feeling like I was underwater, half in dreamland with those mermaids, hearing all the voices from up above. And since I’d been at Evergreen I felt like I’d been swimming so hard, the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn’t there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 12
I was worn out, broken: He had taken almost everything. But he had been all I’d had, all this time. And when the police led him away, I pulled out of the hands of all these loved ones, sobbing, screaming, everything hurting, to try and make him stay.
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 12
And I listened to them talking in the hallway, my mother explaining the best way to serve the tuna salad, on lettuce, while Rina made listening noises and popped her gum. And Rogerson’s phone rang, on and on. No answer.
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 12
I looked up and Rina was standing in the doorway of my room, her arms crossed over her chest. She had on a short, pink dress and strappy high-heeled sandals, and her skin — thanks to her mother’s tanning bed — was already a deep brown. Her blond hair was down, curling over her shoulders, a pair of white sunglasses parked on top of her head. She looked so healthy and alive it was like she was almost sparking, right there in front of me.
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 12
But something had changed in me, even if I didn’t know what it was just yet. All I could think was that I felt alive for the first time since my birthday. From wherever she was, Cass had finally spoken to me, reaching out from dreamland to where I stood in this waking world, half-asleep and wobbly, under those bright, bright stars.
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 4
I was the only one who ever went in there, and when I did the air always smelled stale and strange, pent up like the sorrow my mother carried in her shoulders, her heart, and her face.
– Sarah Dessen, Dreamland, Chapter 3
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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