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208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 8, 2014
A student stood up. Thin. Beautiful. Long, reddish-brown hair. Long legs. Flagrantly short skirt.I couldn't help but think, what if that passage said, "Chubby. Bad skin. Short, mousy-brown hair. Long baggy black T-shirt and cargo pants"? Would you still want to read this book? Would it have even been published? It's no accident that the cover of this book features a professional-quality photo of the author herself. There's nothing U.S. culture loves more than the tragedy of the beautiful, young, dead girl. If you don't believe me, consult any number of movies, "thriller" novels, and crime TV shows, and look at what crimes the national news focuses on. And if you find those last two sentences offensive, well, I assure you, I'm offended too.
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time…What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.Other standout essays include Stability in Motion, an ode to the modern teenager’s sanctuary—her first car and all the memories made in it, and Song for the Special, an honest admission of the crushing jealousies that haunt a generation of kids told that they were better than normal, destined for awards, success, and celebrity.
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out—that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.
Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it: already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.
Everyone thinks they’re special—my grandma for her Marlboro commercials, my parents for discos and the moon. You can be anything, they tell us. No one else is quite like you. But I searched my name on Facebook and got eight tiny pictures staring back. The Marina Keegans with their little hometowns and relationship statuses. When we die, our gravestones will match. HERE LIES MARINA KEEGAN, they will say. Numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
I’m so jealous. Laughable jealousies, jealousies of everyone who might get a chance to speak from the dead.