Chapters (55)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Cast of Characters
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Part Two
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- A note on the Author
“Okay. This kid. This dumb, invisible, shape-shifting kid called Aslan. I miss what he isn’t going to let me have. I don’t have anything to miss yet and that’s what’s killing me. My boyfriend Sebastian. When things were great between us, I missed him like crazy. When I heard he went to the Venice Film Festival to be a PA for Cameron Diaz, I thought I might die.
“Well which is it? Because my mother just died. But it was because of cancer. Not Cameron Diaz.
“My mother’s dead, too. My mom was too fragile, too thin-skinned to handle life on earth, so she left it all behind. She didn’t have the luxury of being a heroine to cancer. She didn’t have the chance to be brave and fight it off with wit and wisdom. The thing that took her took away the wit and wisdom too, and left her not only dead, but a coward as well.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Why are you sorry? You don’t like me anyway. Why would you have liked my mother? She’s just like me, you know.”
“I didn’t say I would have liked her. I said that I was sorry.”
“Why? Why the fuck are you sorry that my mom killed herself?”
“I think … I think because it probably made you how you are.”
“How am I?”
“Alone.”
“I am alone. Completely. Whereas before she died I was mostly alone. I think I prefer it this way.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“I think because you have loveless affairs with other people’s husbands, for one. I think because you stagger drunk as an elephant into Madison Avenue boutiques. I think because you make yourself look so awful, so … ugly. If you wanted to disappear and live alone and unnoticed, you would be beautiful, as you were intended to be. You think that if you make yourself ugly enough, people will want to help you? You’re being ridiculous. It doesn’t work like that. Even the best-hearted people would rather be around beauty. It is the worst-hearted people who will be intrigued by you, the way you are now.”
“And where is your heart?”
“My heart is in a safe-deposit box until I have further use for it. Whether you choose to be beautiful or hideous does not affect my judgment of you. If you wish me to state my camp, then so be it: I am a curious onlooker.”
