Then She Was Gone

Silence subsumes the house

My cleverness oozed out of me like goo

Awnings flapping in a brisk wind

Had she woken up every morning suffused with existential joy? No, she had not.

A plume of ice went down Laurel’s spine.

Ellie used to read two books a week and when they teased her about always having her nose in a book, Ellie used to say, “When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream.”

Stories,” she says, “are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.”

What’s happy got to do with anything? Look, we’re here for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You do know that, don’t you? People try and make out there’s a greater purpose, a secret meaning, that it all means something. And it doesn’t. We’re a bunch of freaks. That’s all there is to it. A big bunch of stupid, inconsequential freaks. We don’t have to be happy. We don’t have to be normal. We don’t even have to be alive. Not if we don’t want to. We can do whatever we want as long as we don’t hurt anyone.

. She is doing two school runs a day

dates in her diary.