22. These sunglasses. Rubbish.
23. The fucking sun! We get it—you’re very fucking bright!
24. Penelope Bunce, who came up with this idea. An idea not accompanied by aplan.Because all she cared about was seeing her rubbish boyfriend, who clearly cocked it all up. Which we all should have expected from someone from Illinois, land of the damned—a place that manages to be both hotandhumid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don’t expect it toalsobe humid. That’s what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!
25. Penelope “Girl Genius” Bunce.
26. And all of her stupid ideas.“Good for us all,”she said; all I heard was“good for Simon.”Crowley… Maybe she was right… Look at him. He’s as happy as a pig in mud. As happy as someone who’s suffering under the “A pig in mud” spell—which I’ve considered casting on himnumeroustimes over the last six months. Because I’m just sotired,and I don’t how to—I mean, there’s nothing— There’s nofixinghim.
27. The Mage. May he rest in pain.
28. Penelope—for maybe being right, about Simon. And America. And this wretched convertible. Because just look at him.…
Off the sofa, out of the flat. Over the ocean, under the sun.
Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy.
And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed.
There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.
Simon looks over at me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“What?!” he shouts. He can’t hear a thing I’m saying over the wind and the engine and the classic rock.
“I hate this fucking car!” I shout back. “The sun is burning me! I might actually catch fire, at any moment!”
The wind is blowing Simon’s hair straight, and he’s squinting—from the sun and from all the smiling. “What!” he shouts at me again.
“You’re so beautiful!” I shout back.
He turns the radio down, so now there’s just the wind and the engine noise to shout over. “What’d you say?!”
“Nothing!”
“Are you okay? You look peaky!”
“I’m fine, Snow—watch the road!”
“Do you want me to put the top up?!”
“No!”
“I’m putting the top up!” He reaches for the lever.
“Wait!”
There’s a metallic creak. I look back—the convertible hood has risen about six inches, then stopped.
“We’ll do it manually!” Simon shouts. “When we pull over!”
The top of the car is well and truly stuck.
Simon is kneeling in the back seat, yanking at it, and it won’t budge.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to raise it while you’re driving,” I say.
