Robyn Schneider

I love that there's such a rivalry. It's like, leaf water versus bean water, ya know? - Charlie

There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.

That's all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current beats against you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.

Everyone's life, not matter how unremarkable, has a singular tragic encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. That moment is the catalyst - the first step in the equation. But knowing the first step will get you nowhere - it's what comes after that determines the result.

To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself. She would always be confined by what everyone expected of her because she was too afraid and too unwilling to correct our imperfect imaginings.

Maybe I__ already guessed that the physics of us didn__ defy any laws of gravity, and with her, there was always an equal and opposite reaction.

Not at all, I just don't understand how the Arch Alchemist became mortal all of a sudden.""Because he split his soul into seven pieces and hid them all over Justice City," Toby retorted."You turned our comic book into a Harry Potter rip-off?" I spluttered.

Still here, Faulkner?" Luke sneered."Still doing that terrible impression of Draco Malfoy?" I asked.

And that was when I saw what Cassidy had done to herself: the gold and red ribbing on her sweater-vest, the matching stripes on her tie, the gray uniform skirt, and the navy blazer draped over her arm..."Is that a Gryffindor tie?" I asked."And an official Harry Potter Merchandise sweater-vest," she confirmed smugly.

Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.

And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself.

Here's a secret," I said. "There's a difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.

Why do they even call it that, "saving yourself"? Like we need to be rescued from sex? It's not like virgins spend their whole lives engaged in the sacred ceremony of "being saved" from intercourse.

I climbed into my car and started to head home, my visor down against the glare of the sun. But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down different road.

And the thing about trying to cheat death is that, in the end, you still lose.

Steinbeck wrote about the tide pools and how profoundly they illustrate the interconnectedness of all things, folded together in an ever-expanding universe that's bound by the elastic string of time. He said that one should look from the tide pool to the stars, and then back again in wonder.

Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could only be moments away from disaster. That everyone's life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary--a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.

But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down a different road.