Maren > Maren's Quotes

“I'll teach you later, but for now I just need someone to watch the signs for me. Come on up to the copilot chair."
I jerked a thumb in the direction of Chubs.
Liam only shook his head. "Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown."
I unbuckle my seat belt with a sigh. As I climbed over Chubs's outstretched legs to the front, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes going to his too-small glasses. " Is his eyesight really that bad?"
"Worse," Liam said. "So, right after we got the hell out of Caledonia, we broke into this house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid's baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone's head in for us to make a clean getaway. then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of a drained pool."
"No way," I said.
"Way," he confirmed. "Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn't climb out of the deep end.
I tried so hard not to laugh, but it was impossible. The mental image was just too damn good.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“People don't live like islands.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy."
-Ruby, The Darkest Minds”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Hi darlin', missed you something fierce.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Why are you so weird?” “Because my weird has to be able to cancel out your weird, Lady Cross-stitch.” “At least what I do is considered an art form,” Chubs said. “Yes, in ye olde medieval Europe you would’ve been quite the catch—”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“There are some people like that, you know? The darkest minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Mom?” Then again, louder. “Mom?”
She turned around so quickly, she knocked the pan off the stove and nearly dropped the gray paper into the open flame there. I saw her reach back and slap her hand against the knobs, twisting a dial until the smell of gas disappeared.
“I don’t feel good. Can I stay home today?”
No response, not even a blink. Her jaw was working, grinding, but it took me walking over to the table and sitting down for her to find her voice. “How—how did you get in here?”
“I have a bad headache and my stomach hurts,” I told her, putting my elbows up on the table. I knew she hated when I whined, but I didn’t think she hated it enough to come over and grab me by the arm again.
“I asked you how you got in here, young lady. What’s your name?” Her voice sounded strange. “Where do you live?”
Her grip on my skin only tightened the longer I waited to answer. It had to have been a joke, right? Was she sick, too? Sometimes cold medicine did funny things to her.
Funny things, though. Not scary things.
“Can you tell me your name?” she repeated.
“Ouch!” I yelped, trying to pull my arm away. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
She yanked me up from the table, forcing me onto my feet. “Where are your parents? How did you get in this house?”
Something tightened in my chest to the point of snapping.
“Mom, Mommy, why—”
“Stop it,” she hissed, “stop calling me that!”
“What are you—?” I think I must have tried to say something else, but she dragged me over to the door that led out into the garage. My feet slid against the wood, skin burning. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?” I cried. I tried twisting out of her grasp, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Not until we were at the door to the garage and she pushed my back up against it.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I know you’re confused, but I promise that I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you got into this house, and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know—”
“I live here!” I told her. “I live here! I’m Ruby!”
When she looked at me again, I saw none of the things that made Mom my mother. The lines that formed around her eyes when she smiled were smoothed out, and her jaw was clenched around whatever she wanted to say next. When she looked at me, she didn’t see me. I wasn’t invisible, but I wasn’t Ruby.
“Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember. Please!”
She put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the door handle. “My husband is a police officer. He’ll be able to help you get home. Wait in here—and don’t touch anything.”
The door opened and I was pushed into a wall of freezing January air. I stumbled down onto the dirty, oil-stained concrete, just managing to catch myself before I slammed into the side of her car. I heard the door shut behind me, and the lock click into place; heard her call Dad’s name as clearly as I heard the birds in the bushes outside the dark garage.
She hadn’t even turned on the light for me.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over.
The door was locked.
“I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!”
Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it out into words. To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Time to carpe the hell out of this diem.” Less”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Is his eyesight really that bad?"
"Worse," Liam said. "So right after we got the hell out of Caledonia, we broke into this house to spend, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid's baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to bad someone's head in for us to make a clean getaway. Then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of the drained pool."
"No way," I said.
"Way," he confirmed. "Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn't climb out of the deep end.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Ruby,” Chubs said. Then again, louder. “Ruby! Oh, for the love of…we were talking about Black Betty, not your Orange ass.” I”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“When the deaths finally came to light, my elementary school put a strict ban on teachers and staff talking to us about what was then called Everheart's disease, after Micheal Everheart, the first know kid to have died of it. Soon, someone somewhere decided to give it a proper name: Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration-- IAAN for short. And then it wasn't just Micheal's disease. It was all of ours.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“The Darkest Minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Let's carpe the hell out of this diem.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“We'll just have to try to make better mistakes tomorrow.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“He's so busy looking inside people to find the good that he misses the knife they're holding in their hand.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Did you know...you make me so happy that sometimes I actually forget to breath? I'll be looking at you, and my chest will get so tight...and it's like, the only thought in my head is how much I want to reach over and kiss you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Never, never, never. I am never going to forget you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“It feels like we should do something," he said. "Like, send her off on a barge out to sea and set her on fire. Let her go out in a blaze of glory."
Chubs raised an eyebrow. "It's a minivan, not a Viking.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Cause, frankly, the way I see it, you and me? Inevitable.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“That was not like riding a bike, you asshole!”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Ruby, give me one reason why we can’t be together, and I’ll give you a hundred why we can. We can go anywhere you want. I’m not your parents. I’m not going to abandon you or send you away, not ever.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“That was the Liam Stewart way of saying, Hi, darlin', missed you something fierce.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Don’t be scared. Don’t let them see.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“They were never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind. They were afraid of us-the ones who lived.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“...crackers..." a voice breathed out nehind us, "yesss..."
Both of us turned, watching as Chubs twisted around in his seat and settled back down, still fast asleep.
I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. Liam rolled his eyes, smiling.
"He dreams about food," he said. "A lot.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“I hugged him without any kind of fear or self-consciousness, fiercely, with a rush of emotion that almost brought tears to my eyes.
"I could kiss you!" Chubs cried.
"Please don't!" I gasp out, feeling his arms tighten around my ribs to the point of cracking them.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Maybe nothing will ever change for us,” he said. “But don’t you want to be around just in case it does?”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Liam cleared his throat again and turned to fully face me. “So, it’s the summer and you’re in Salem, suffering through another boring, hot July, and working part-time at an ice cream parlor. Naturally, you’re completely oblivious to the fact that all of the boys from your high school who visit daily are more interested in you than the thirty-one flavors. You’re focused on school and all your dozens of clubs, because you want to go to a good college and save the world. And just when you think you’re going to die if you have to take another practice SAT, your dad asks if you want to go visit your grandmother in Virginia Beach.”
“Yeah?” I leaned my forehead against his chest. “What about you?”
“Me?” Liam said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m in Wilmington, suffering through another boring, hot summer, working one last time in Harry’s repair shop before going off to some fancy university—where, I might add, my roommate will be a stuck-up-know-it-all-with-a-heart-of-gold named Charles Carrington Meriwether IV—but he’s not part of this story, not yet.” His fingers curled around my hip, and I could feel him trembling, even as his voice was steady. “To celebrate, Mom decides to take us up to Virginia Beach for a week. We’re only there for a day when I start catching glimpses of this girl with dark hair walking around town, her nose stuck in a book, earbuds in and blasting music. But no matter how hard I try, I never get to talk to her.
“Then, as our friend Fate would have it, on our very last day at the beach I spot her. You. I’m in the middle of playing a volleyball game with Harry, but it feels like everyone else disappears. You’re walking toward me, big sunglasses on, wearing this light green dress, and I somehow know that it matches your eyes. And then, because, let’s face it, I’m basically an Olympic god when it comes to sports, I manage to volley the ball right into your face.”
“Ouch,” I said with a light laugh. “Sounds painful.”
“Well, you can probably guess how I’d react to that situation. I offer to carry you to the lifeguard station, but you look like you want to murder me at just the suggestion. Eventually, thanks to my sparkling charm and wit—and because I’m so pathetic you take pity on me—you let me buy you ice cream. And then you start telling me how you work in an ice cream shop in Salem, and how frustrated you feel that you still have two years before college. And somehow, somehow, I get your e-mail or screen name or maybe, if I’m really lucky, your phone number. Then we talk. I go to college and you go back to Salem, but we talk all the time, about everything, and sometimes we do that stupid thing where we run out of things to say and just stop talking and listen to one another breathing until one of us falls asleep—”
“—and Chubs makes fun of you for it,” I added.
“Oh, ruthlessly,” he agreed. “And your dad hates me because he thinks I’m corrupting his beautiful, sweet daughter, but still lets me visit from time to time. That’s when you tell me about tutoring a girl named Suzume, who lives a few cities away—”
“—but who’s the coolest little girl on the planet,” I manage to squeeze out.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds