âEven if what he says is true, I think itâs still a victory,â she said. âBecause she won on this day, with this particular set of people. We can never know what else might have happened had other competitors been there. The Russian girls could have won, or they could have gotten jet-lagged and choked.â Anna shrugged. âAnd this is the truth of any game - it can only exist at the moment that is being played. Itâs the same with being an actor. In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.â
What Sam loved best was being alone with Sadie and filling a blank slate with their grand ideas. He loved building a world with her.
No, Sam had said, you donât understand. Itâs the principle. She was pretending to be my friend, but she was just doing it for community service. Marx had looked at Sam blankly, and then he said, No one spends hundreds of hours doing anything out of charity, Sam. Thinking of this and looking at the little paperweight, Samâs heart swelled with love for Sadie. Why was it so hard for him to say he loved her even when she said it to him? He knew he loved her. People who felt far less for each other said âloveâ all the time, and it didnât mean a thing. And maybe that was the point. He more than loved Sadie Green. There needed to be another word for it.
There are, he determines, infinite ways his mother doesnât die that night and only one way she does.
The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.
As Sadie spoke, Sam was reminded of a winter afternoon, many years ago, and of commuters clogging up the train station, blocking his path. At the time, theyâd seemed like impediments to him, but maybe heâd been thinking of them the wrong way. What makes a person want to shiver in a train station for nothing more than the promise of a secret image? But then, what makes a person drive down an unmarked road in the middle of the night? Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from dispair.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin