Extraits

She immediatly switched the song over to The Smiths' "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out", singing along to the chorus directly in Dave's face.

To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.

"Are we going to play clichéd music the whole way there?"

"You call The Smiths clichéd one more time and I'm going to put this song on repeat, then run us off the cliff so that people think we died in some teenage suicide death pact. Then everyone at school will be sad and they'll do a big teary gesture by making you win prom king, then you'll be that guy that gets memoralized by a candlelight vigil by people who didn't know him all that well. You'll get voted into the cliché hall of fame."

"I would throw up inside my grave."

"You have a very poor grasp on the science of death."

"You look like a murderer."

"Isn't the point of picture IDs? That way if you become a murderer they can flash your picture on the news and everyone will be like, 'Yup, that guy totally kills people.'"

Dave caught a glimpse of the title. "He's going to file a restraining order."

"That or a marrige certificate," Julia said, grinning. "After his performance, I really wouldn't mind."

"I don't know if it was that good."

"Dave, it was so good, you're probably pregnat right now, just from the sexiness of the worlds."

"Wouldn't it be interesting if every text message you received told you how many times it'd been edited before being sent?"

Julia shivered. "Don't talk about that stuff. It makes me get existential."

"How do text messages make you feel existencial?"

" I start thinking about exactly that: how people can edit a thought before sending it out to the world. They can make themselves seem more well-spoken than they are, or funnier, smarter. I start thinking that no one on the world is who they say they are, then my mind goes to how I also edit myself, not just online but in real life, except for those rare instances like right now where I'm ranting - even though that's a lie because I've had this train of thought before and damned if I didn't tweak it in my head a few times to make it sound better - and then my mind starts racing so furiously I can't control my thoughts, and I start thinking about robots and wondering if I'm even a real person. Then I have to watch cartoons to shut my brain off."

Maybe for the first time, he looked at her and saw more than just her face. The words that he would have used to describe her yesterday - that she was just another popular pretty girl, a soccer player who maybe ran for student concil or worked on the yearbook or something like taht - suddently seemed to lack any real description. That was true of many of the people at the party, he realized. It was like he'd been carrying a coloring book that hadn't yet been drawn in. He and Julia knew the outlines of people, but not much more.