_.ainaraa._

“Do you really not think sad things can be beautiful?” I say as Jamie drives me home. He isn’t shallow;
surely he has felt what I’m talking about. His favorite song was on the radio when we got in and I wasn’t
allowed to speak until now. I’ve been thinking of examples to make him understand. Jamie doesn’t take
his eyes off the road, doesn’t look at me.
“Nope,” he says. “You’re just weird.”
“Why does that make me weird?” I say. I momentarily forget my arguments and examples. “Just because I
think something different from you doesn’t make me weird.”
“I bet if we took a survey, everybody would agree with me.”
“That doesn’t make you right,” I say. “And you’re supposed to be against being just like everybody else.”
“It’s not about being like everybody else. When someone dies, it’s bad,” Jamie says. “That’s just
something everybody knows.”
“You don’t understand,” I say.
“I do understand,” he says. He pulls the car into my driveway. “You just see things differently and that’s
okay, because I like you weird. You’re my weird, morbid pretty girl.” I let him kiss me good night. I sigh.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“What about Romeo and Juliet?” I say. “That’s beautiful and sad.”
“But that’s not real life.”
“So?”
“There’s real life and then there are books, Autumn,” Jamie says. “In real life, it would just be sad and
stu pid.”
“How could two people dying for love be stupid?” I say. We are sitting in the dark facing each other in the
seats, our seatbelts off.
“It’s stupid to kill yourself,” Jamie says. “That’s what cowards do.”
“I think it’s brave,” I say. “And I think it’s beautiful that they loved each other so much that they couldn’t
live without the other one.”
― Laura Nowlin, If He Had Been With Me