I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered.

That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.

Once I turned eighteen, I could cut myself off from everyone and finally get what I wanted, which was to be on my own, once and for all. ~Ruby, pg 38

Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.

Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future.

That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.

In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.