❝spencer, all this week you've been holding my hands. what about your germ thing?❞
❝you were more important.❞
hazel finley is a liar. but she's a damn good one. and she's especially good at telling when other people are lying. she's the newest memb...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
❝Silence, I discover, is actually something you can hear.❞
HARUKI MURAKAMI
✩
3.2 : explanations
(tw: mentions of abuse, alcoholism, drugs, stalking)
Nick Rojas is twelve years old. He stands at the edge of a grave. The headstone is brand new, perfect marble. He traces the letters that spell his mother's name. Behind him, his father stands solemnly in a nice suit. Nick never sees his father cry. He finds it strange.
But his father does get angry. He throws things. Mostly at the walls, but sometimes at Nick. That's usually when Nick goes into his room, picks up a book, and shuts the closet door. He waits there until it's quiet outside. Then he can go to bed.
But in high school, he stops picking up books and starts picking up cans of beer. At parties, after school, but sometimes at home, when his father isn't around. In junior year he has a stash. In senior year he sells it.
Somehow, Nick manages to struggle through high school enough to go to school. Vanderbilt University, in Tennessee.
He studies English because he doesn't know what else to study. He fails English because he's just there to drink.
In freshman year, a friend introduces him to weed. In sophomore year, the same friend introduces him to Hazel Finley. He falls in love with both.
But it was Caroline Knapp who said, "Alcohol makes everything better until it makes everything worse." And she was right.
Weed makes Nick sleepy, but tequila makes him angry. He doesn't remember throwing that book at Hazel, but he doesn't remember her having a black eye. He doesn't remember yelling at her, but her roommate does.
They'll both find out how broken they are soon enough.
In Nick's senior year, and Hazel's junior, they attend a party. Nick gets drunk. Hazel gets more drunk. Stumbling back to her dorm, she tells him everything. Pukes on his shoes. Tells him more.
And it scares him. Even when he's sober. So he calls her the next day before class and tells her they're over.
But he soon finds that like alcohol, like weed, like the speed he's so recently discovered, he can't live without her.
And Hazel can't live without him, either.
They're back together in two weeks.
He graduates, but just barely, and on the same night, invites Hazel to move in with him.
