That Weekend Quotes
"Earth, cold and rocky, pressing against my cheek. Tree roots digging into my body like hardened veins."
"My voice scrapes my throat, like I haven’t used it in some time. I lick my lips, find they’re cold as stones."
"I don’t know where I am or why I’m alone. I know nothing except for the fact it’s prom weekend."
"It’s startling, how long it’s been since I’ve felt pure, undiluted fear like this."
"I have no defense that will betray the real reason I don’t want to be alone with Kat and Jesse."
"I was too embarrassed to tell her I got rejected from mine—Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. So, I lied."
"The world bends the way Kat Marcotte wants it to, and it’s not just because she’s beautiful."
"My heartbeat picks up as the man and woman playing pool lower their cues and glance at me."
"No way through it but through it, as my mother likes to say."
"No matter how far I stray, I know I’ll always have a home to come back to in Kat."
"Kat curled against Jesse’s body like she was made to fit there."
"I couldn’t even get the words out—what happened—before he grabbed me and threw his shaking arms around me."
"Ovarian cancer. His mom went to the emergency room thinking she had appendicitis and returned home with a prognosis of four months to live."
"I told him I was sorry and he put his head on my shoulder and said it in my ear: I love you."
"Because we never talked about what he said on the merry-go-round ever again. Jesse seemed to want to forget it ever happened, and I played along because I knew he needed me to."
"I need to let it go. He loves her, she loves him, and I love both of them. If I don’t let this go, I’ll lose them both."
"You’re different," Jesse says quietly. "Half the time I feel like you can’t stand me."
"It’s not unheard of with an injury like this for patients to be unable to recall the hours before the trauma."
"My gaze travels up to the owner’s face. It takes me a beat to recognize her: Dr. Ashraf, from the ER."
"I can’t bring myself to listen to the panicked voice mails my parents must have left when I didn’t check in Saturday night. Or read the texts from people at school, who have no doubt heard by now that something happened to the three of us this weekend. How do I even begin to explain myself?"
"The sound of my IV machine beeping, the nurses chatting in the hall outside my room."
"I wasn’t raised with religion, but I don’t know if I accept that it’s all random, that we’re not accountable to anyone."
"Even in freshman year, when he got into a fight in the hallway with some asshole sophomore who’d been teasing him, Jesse was white in the face when a teacher pulled the other kid off him."
"It’s been more than seventy-two hours. I watch Dateline. I know what their odds of being found alive are."
"I had been too lazy to go get it then, and apparently Saturday Claire was too lazy as well."
"She’s traumatized," Mrs. Marcotte says. "The doctors said the stress of questioning could make it worse."
"I think I have all I need. Thank you both, for your time."
"My buddy got into a car accident last year," Amos says. "He dropped his car off at a repair place, called his girlfriend to come pick him up, got home, and went to sleep. Said when he woke up, he asked his girlfriend what happened to the car. He didn’t remember waking up that morning…didn’t remember the accident or anything that happened after."
"If the sheriff is going to keep shit from me, I don’t have to keep my half-assed promise not to tell anyone about the hiker."
"Everything after that is a darkened tunnel, and the redheaded man’s face is already disappearing down it."
"Fear flips my stomach; of course McAuliffe wants to believe Jesse is responsible for whatever happened on that mountain."
"Home is Jesse tucked into the corner of my basement couch, Twizzler hanging out of his mouth, arguing with me about whether it’s an unfair advantage for me to use Kirby in every Smash Bros. match."
"Forensic examination of Kat Marcotte’s car underway."
"I don’t want to go home if they’re not there. But I can’t be here, either."
"I am not okay at all. Everything is so fucked up and I’m not supposed to talk about it."
"Soon everyone will know I was with them on the mountain. They’ll want the answer to the question I can’t answer, the only question that matters now."
"No—this is about what happened in McAuliffe’s office."
"We were hiking and I hit my head bad…I just got out of the hospital yesterday."
"It doesn’t mean anything—Amos having hope doesn’t change the odds they’re not alive—but it’s enough to propel me off the couch."
"I swallow the anxiety knotting up in my throat."
"To eliminate my blood from someone else’s blood."
"It’s easier to be angry. It’s easier than wondering why I was the one who got away."
"If you can’t do it for yourself, you do it for the people who love you."
"How did he find us in the last place we were supposed to be?"
"I knew I was being a giant brat about it, but we were about to start middle school. Kat and I had spent all summer making plans."
"You don’t really have a choice. If you can’t do it for yourself, you do it for the people who love you."
"Mom found me a psychiatrist off campus who I take a twenty-minute bus ride to see every other week."
"Put all these pieces together, and it makes sense Michael Dorsey would murder the granddaughter of a wealthy congresswoman, along with her boyfriend, for one hundred thousand dollars."
"It is very hard to hide signs of depression when your mother is a therapist."
"The FBI says that Kat’s and Jesse’s DNA was found in the trunk of Mike Dorsey’s Dodge Charger."
"You probably heard the rumors about where I was."
"I hadn’t slept in almost a week when my parents checked me into Twin Oaks."
"But you are, I think to myself. You’re still here."
"It doesn’t seem right that everyone is going about their business just like last year, like nothing has changed."
"I love you," I say, meaning it quite possibly more than I ever have. "Good night."
"Nothing compares to those moments before reality sets in."
"I’m not supposed to use my phone while working but I always leave it tucked behind the menus at the podium."
"But there’s no fast-forwarding through a long winter; there’s only waiting it out."
"If I say there’s no reason for what I’m doing, Dad will be even more convinced there is a reason."
"It must suck to be a parent, to have to watch your children head off into the world, knowing you have absolutely no control over whether they’ll come back to you in one piece."
"I’m still so stunned by Andrea’s revelation that I don’t even think to return the awkward hug she gives me."
"How am I supposed to accept that the worst thing to ever happen to me has no meaning?"
"I can arrest you, if it would make you feel better."
"Claire, you’re not always going to feel this way."
"No, I am not okay. I needed there to be a reason for what happened to us and now that I’ve potentially found one, I can’t handle it."
"You could always try searching the phone number on Facebook. If the person has their phone number linked to their account, you’ll be able to find their profile that way."
"I think back to the question that has been bothering me for six months—how come, no matter how many times I’ve Googled it, I was never able to turn up any mention of a robbery on Bobcat Mountain?"
"Everyone in New York wants to be someone, but everyone is no one."
"She trades everything she loves for that spot at Boston College: her dream of going to NYU; a future with the boy she has, against all her better judgment, let into her life."
"The thing about lying is that if you do it enough, it becomes something you don’t even have to think about. Just like breathing."
"Nothing is more terrifying than a villain who sees himself as a hero."
"I knew then that she was moving us home to protect him, not my sister and me."
"I wish you’d killed me, I tried to say with my eyes. Then maybe someone would finally stop you."
"Everything I do is for you two," he’d said. "Everything I do is for my family."
"We were his and no one would ever take us away from him."
"I don’t know what you want, Jesse. For my family to be different? I’ve never once for one second thought you weren’t good enough for me."
"I’m not making you do anything," she said. "I’m giving you the choice."
"She’s alive," Mike finally said, with a resentful glance at Amos.
"Why did you let her leave?" Amos said, staring back at me.
"Even if this worked, even if Jesse and I got away, it wouldn’t matter; I had already lost him."
"It obviously was not me, because I do not make mistakes."
"What the hell are you doing?" Amos shouts, bursting into the room.
"I think your mother would be disgusted with you."
"He was a monster, Claire. The world is better off without him."
"Then I guess I have to hope she never stops wanting me."
"We obviously don’t agree on how to handle this situation."
"I think you're overestimating how badly I want answers."
"I'm a little hurt, Claire. I thought you and I were growing close."
"Without you as a witness to the fake kidnapping, we needed a way to seed the idea Jesse and Kat were taken."
"Maybe all that's left to do is embrace it. Numb it."
"If we leave this house, we will have to run forever."
"Kat, your family’s money is not going to save us from this."
"I'm happy they think I'm dead. I hope every day for the rest of their lives they wonder if it’s their fault."
"I hate you. You are the worst person I have ever known in my entire life."
"You couldn’t possibly understand the position I was in."
"I dated him for almost a year with no idea who he was."
"I can't let you go to jail for me. I have to tell them the truth."