In My Mailbox (11)

In My Mailbox was created by The Story Siren as a neat way to see what everyone else is reading. And a reason for me to secretly envy all the other bloggers out there.

I'm expecting two more books in the mail, and I was going to wait for them to come in to do my In My Mailbox, but I decided againts it. - So I helped the wonderful Catherine out with a contest she was having so she offered me her book for the gesture. Whether I won or not I was getting the book, which was so awesome! So I I recieved it in my mailbox yesterday. Oh and I am almost 100% sure she signed it lol...


Chasing Windmills by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub. Date: March 2009

This is the part that’s going to be hard to explain: How can I tell you why two people who were afraid of everything–other people, open places, noise, confusion, life itself–wound up riding the subways alone under Manhattan late at night?

Okay, it’s like this: When everything is unfamiliar and scary, your heart pounds just getting change from the grocery cashier. That feels like enough to kill you right there. So the danger of the subways at night can’t be much worse. All danger begins to fall into the same category. You have no way to sink any deeper into fear.

Besides, consider the alternative. Staying home.

That’s enough about that for now. I need to tell you about her.

She got on the Lexington Avenue Local at…what was it?…I think Union Square. Funny how a thing like that can be so damned important, but you don’t know it’s important until an instant later in the big scheme of time. Then you go back and try to retrieve it. You tell yourself it’s in there somewhere. But it’s really in that no-man’s-land of the moment before you woke up and started paying attention to your own life.

I’m pretty sure it was Union Square.

At first we looked at each other for a split second, but of course we looked away immediately. It’s part of what makes us like the animals, I suppose. Ever seen two dogs circling to fight? They look right into each other’s eyes. It’s a challenge. So when a dog doesn’t want to challenge anybody, he looks away. In case I haven’t made it clear by now, we were two dogs who weren’t lookingfor a fight.

But then, after we both looked away, we weren’t afraid of each other anymore. We knew we didn’t have to be. I mean, except to the extent that we were afraid of everything.