Black Flamed Candle Books 🕯️📚’s Reviews > Different for Boys > Status Update

‘I look at him to find he's looking back at me. And he leans forward, just a little, then a little more.
And he reaches me.
And he kisses me.
Gently so as not to bump my nose or eye, he presses his lips to mine. And for a second, for a minute, for ever, every nerve in my body is right there, right at the point where we’re touching.
And boom, I think.
That's it.’

The milkshake mark ruffalo joke made me chuckle.

‘We just sit there like that for a long, long time, letting night fall outside, not saying anything at all, just the two of us sitting there, waiting for the month or year or whenever in our lives where we're allowed to stop being lonely.’

‘And for a minute, it feels like I'm going to cry, it really does, about how empty it all feels, about how difficult things are going to be at school for a while, about how much relief there is to still having friends like Freddie and Jack.’

"I know," I say.
He's quiet for a minute and then…"It isn't easy," he says, "having people think that about you. But most of them don't care, not really. They just love having something new to beat you up with. You have to show them it won't work..."
I breathe out, long and tired.
“…I think he just needed someone. Someone who cared only for him."

"You tried to tell me and I-"
"Oh, please," he says. "Like I didn't know you were
lying."
I blink. "You knew?"
"It was obvious," he says. "Well, obvious to me, but that's probably only because I was looking. If I'd known, I wouldn't have teased you."

‘THE EVENING AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD—"Parents say they want to know the truth…but they never really mean it."

‘He interrupts, looking around at the staring eyes on us, holding them until they look away. "Everyone's going to give you (shit) for a while, so what you got to do is make sure they know you don't care. Show them you don't. Come out for rugby. It'll pass."

‘I make it through. I don't know how…I leave school ground with the force field still in place…’

‘People snicker and stare at me as I walk by and there's like this force field around me on all sides that no one would dare to cross. I don't know why I don't lie about it, why I don't counter-argue, why I don't make Charlie the one in the force field.
Well, yes, I do, I guess.
I didn't think it was possible to feel lonelier. But there you go. Life will always surprise you with what it's capable of.’