Jeffrey Eugenides

In the end we had pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained. Oddly shaped emptiness mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name. What lingered after them was not life, but the most trivial list of mundane facts. A clock ticking on the wall, a room dim at noon, the *outrageousness* of a human being thinking only of herself.

We knew the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love, and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls… but only that we had loved them… and that they hadn't heard us calling… still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms… where they went to be alone for all time… and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.

Collecting everything we could of theirs, the Lisbon girls wouldn't leave our minds but they were slipping away. The color of their eyes was fading along with the exact locations… of moles and dimples. From five, they had become four, and they were all the living and the dead, becoming shadows. We would have lost them completely if the girls hadn't contacted us.

What lingered after them was not life, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.

We knew that they knew everything about us,and that we couldn't fathom them at all.

Given Lux's failure to make curfew everyone expected a crackdown, but few anticipated it would be so drastic. The girls were taken out of school, and Mrs. Lisbon shut the house in maximum-security isolation.

No one could understand how Mrs. Lisbon and Mr. Lisbon, our math teacher, could produce such beautiful creatures.

We would never be sure of the sequence of events. We argue about it still.

We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy. And how you ended up knowing what colors went together.

We felt the imprisonment of being a girl.

In the end, Parkie won because of the Cadillac, Kevin Head because he had the killer weed, and Joe Hill Conley because he won all the school prizes which Trip thought would impress Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon.

Look at us. Running around, always rushed, always late. I guess that's why they call it the human race. What we crave most in this world is connection. For some people it happens at first site. It's when you know, you know. It's fate working its magic. And that's great for them. They get to live in a pop song; ride the express train. But that's not the way it really works. For the rest of us it's a bit less romantic. It's complicated and it's messy. It's about horrible timing and fumbled opportunities. And not being able to say what you need to say when you need to say it. At least, that's the way it was for me.

Every once in a while, out of all the randomness, something unexpected happens that pushes us all forward. And the truth is, what I'm struggling to think, and what I'm struggling to feel, is that maybe the human race isn't a race at all.

Oh yeah? You enjoy that, there's gonna come a time in your life when you're not gonna want people to know it's your birthday.

Because getting old sucks. Most people don't accomplish what they'd hope to and they realize that they are most likely not going to. They end up living these quite lives of denial, and uh... brushing birthdays under the rug just becomes a part of that.

Not specifically Parkinson's, But I'm not gonna lie, I've had my bouts with hypochondria.

That's thinking you have diseases that you don't really have.

So that we're clear, she did not put me in the friend zone. We put each other in the friend zone. It was a mutual placement. You know that.

What is that even supposed to mean?

I see. So just so that I'm clear, which one of your three failed marriages taught you that lesson?

Look at. Running around. Always rushed. Always late. Guess that's why they called it the human race. But sometimes, it slows down just enogh for all the pieces fall into place Fate works it's magic. And you're connected.

Neurotic is simply an intense form of introspection. You're be called introspective and being introspective is good. You walk around with an opinion, with point of view, and some source of nice kind of direction.