Lani Quotes

“You're supposed to be kind to everyone, because you never know when you're meeting an angel.”
― Carol Plum-Ucci, What Happened to Lani Garver: A Young Adult Mystery Novel About Shattered Friendship and Angels

“You gotta pay your dues to sing the blues.”
― Carol Plum-Ucci, What Happened to Lani Garver: A Young Adult Mystery Novel About Shattered Friendship and Angels

“We get in and I start the car. “Are you going to be good to Lani?” I ask. I think of Tommy Cook, a pale boy with psoriasis; we used to tie him to a chair with bungee cords and put him in the middle of the road, then hide. Few cars would actually come down Rainbow Drive, but when they did, it always surprised me that the drivers would slow their vehicles and swerve around the chair. None of them ever got out of their cars to help Tommy; it was as though they were in on the prank. I don’t know how Tommy managed to let us catch him more than once. Maybe he liked the attention.

“I’ll try,” Scottie says. “But it’s hard. She has this face that you just want to hit.”

“I know what you mean,” I say, thinking of Tommy, but realize I’m not supposed to empathize. “What does that mean?” I ask. “The kind of face that you want to hit. Where did you get that?” Sometimes I wonder if Scottie knows what she’s saying or if it’s something she recites, like those kids who memorize the Declaration of Independence.

“It’s something Mom said about Danielle.”

“I see.” Joanie has carried her juvenile meanness into her adult life. She sends unflattering pictures of her ex-friends to the Advertiser to put in their society pages. She always has some sort of drama in her life, some friend I’m not supposed to speak to or invite to our barbecues, and then I hear her on the phone gossiping about the latest scandal in an outraged and thrilled voice. “You are going to die,” I’ll hear her say. “Oh my God, you will just die.”

Is this where Scottie gets it? By watching her mother use cruelty as a source of entertainment? I feel almost proud that I have made these deductions without the blogs and without Esther, and I’m eager to tell Joanie about all of this, to prove that I was capable without her.”
― Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants