I want to go around the neighborhood saying, “We’re depressed.” If my mum can’t get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it’s eating us alive.

"What is this, Grand Central Station?"

" I agree with Thomas," Tara Finke says.
Thomas Mackee looks horrified. "Don't.'
'Don't what?"
"Don't agree with me." He looks around at his friends, and with his finger twirling around his head, he makes the "she's cuckoo" sign."

Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you.
But no one does.

I can't believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don't feel free. I feel like shit.

I miss the Stella girls telling me what I am. That I'm sweet and placid and accommodating and loyal and nonthreatening and good to have around. And Mia. I want her to say, "Frankie, you're silly, you're lazy, you're talented, you're passionate, you're restrained, you're blossoming, you're contrary."
I want to be an adjective again. But I'm a noun.
A nothing. A nobody. A no one.

So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, "It's Francesca Spinelli," and she says, "Francesca, you've got to stop using last names. How are you doing?" and I say "I feel like shit", and I don't know how it happens, but by eight o'clock that night I'm lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we're eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie. And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life.

The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.

“I just want it to go back to the way it was."
"It'll never go back to the way it was, Frankie. But you have to make sure it goes forward.”

1) It’s a beautiful book.

2) My average rating will go up and my friends people will stop roasting me for being a critical reader.

3) Thomas, The Piper's Son.

❀ buddy reread with Illumimay

“I just want it to go back to the way it was.”
“It’ll never go back to the way it was, Frankie. But you have to make sure it goes forward.”

BLESS YOU ALL FOR PUSHING THIS BOOK AND FOR MAKING SURE I'M NOT THE LAST AUSSIE TO DEVOUR A MARCHETTA BOOK.

“Do something that scares you everyday.”

“The depression belongs to all of us. I think of the family down the road whose mother was having a baby and they went around the neighborhood saying, "We're pregnant." I want to go around the neighborhood saying, "We're depressed." If my mum can't get out of bed in the morning, all of us feel the same. Her silence has become ours, and it's eating us alive.”

“You blame me for this, don't you?" he says.
"I don't need to. You're doing a better job.”

“It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door.
He turns around. “What?”
Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up.
“The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you.”