Markus Zusak is the author of this beautiful novel. This author has written many glorious novels which are equally beautiful and inspiring. In this novel, the author entertains his readers with a mind-blowing story. The beauty of this novel is that it contains many short stories that entertain the readers from the very first page to till the last word of the novel.
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Your email address will not be published. Home what your with the book pdf about free for and movie life you read love quotes how. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak protect the diamonds survive the clubs dig deep through the spades feel the hearts Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. Hes pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman.
One day, I decide to progress the relationship and follow her. The girl strides. I struggle. When I started running, I felt like I was in the Olympic four-hundred-meter final. I feel pitiful. My legs labor to lift and drag me forward.
My lungs are starving. Still, I keep running. I have to. She goes to the edge of town to the Grounds, where the athletic field is. When we make it to the field, she jumps the fence, peeling off the sweatshirt to leave it hanging there.
As for me, I stagger myself back to a walk and collapse under the shade of a tree. The girl does laps. The world does laps around me. A dizziness circles me, and I need to throw up. Christ, Ed, I breathe. Even more than I thought. I know, I answer. I know. If she sees me, she sees me. She stops for a while and stretches as the air finally breaks through to reach my lungs properly.
Her right leg is up on the fence. Halfway through those thoughts, she notices me but looks immediately away.
She tilts her head and sends her eyes to the ground. Exactly like the other morning. Just for that second. I understand this as she takes the leg off the fence and changes to the other. When she stops stretching and reaches for her sweatshirt, I climb from the ground and make my way toward her.
She begins to run but stops. She knows. I look at her, and she looks at the ground about a yard or so from my right ankle. The stupidity of my voice feels beyond repair.
A breath. Her eyes are still focused on the ground beside me. I take one step. No more. It reminds me of Melanie Griffith. She looks back to me now and gives me the same look of recognition as the other day. I saw you nearly every day. I feel kind of uncomfortable. It tastes like strawberry on my lips. I watch her and hear her bare feet lightly touching the earth. I like that sound. It reminds me of her voice. Every day, without fail.
Her shyness made me worry about that. You guess what people say. You watch their mouths move and imagine the sounds of their feet hitting the ground. The strange thing I notice as I watch is that when a boy comes along and talks to the girls and walks with them, the running girl shifts back into the mode of looking to the ground. I stand and wonder for a while and conclude that she probably just lacks confidence, like me. She probably feels too tall and gawky, not realizing how beautiful everyone knows she is.
At myself. How the hell would you know? I very much doubt it. I have no business plotting or predicting anything for this girl. A few times, I watch her house at night. Nothing happens. For some reason I imagine it to be something like Alison, but mostly I just think of her as the running girl. They all wear black shorts and a light blue tank top with a rectangular patch sewn on the back. I hear it in my mind and place the name carefully to her face.
It fits nicely. Not Edward, Edmund, Edwin. Just Ed. Sheer mediocrity feels nice for a change. Sophie sees me once she stands up, and a small piece of contentment finds itself on her face. She looks happy to see me, but she still turns from me almost straightaway. She walks to the marshaling area with a pair of crappy old spiked shoes in her hand I assume the older kids are allowed to wear them in the longer races when her father calls out again.
Not from that distance. She only gives me a quick glance and goes on. I know what I have to do now. A snack. I realize that for every good message, there will always be one that will agonize me. They run together, but at the end, the other girl finishes more strongly. Go, Annie! For the race he goes down to the fence and watches intently. He yells nothing.
Only watches. At times, I can sense some tension in him as he wills his daughter ahead of the other girl. When she wins, he applauds her, and he applauds Sophie, too. When Sophie comes and stands next to her father, he puts his arm around her.
Her disappointment is written heavily across her shoulders. Not to mention he was an alcoholic. My own father was a quiet man who never had a bad word for anyone. My ma would rant and rave and scream abuse at him for being out, but he never reacted. He never told her off in return. In short, he looks like a gentleman. They walk back to the mother together and sit there on the hill.
The father and mother hold hands as Sophie drinks one of those sports drinks. They look like the type of family who tell each other they love each other when they go to bed, and when they wake up, and before they go to work. As they sit on the ground, I take a closer look at those shoes. The girl deserves better. The Doorman comes out and asks for some, but I give him a big pat instead. No one in their right mind would throw diamonds out, would they? If anything, they need protecting.
Milla, I think. The woman on Edgar Street and her daughter, Angelina. Shaky as hell but nice as ever. Sophie loses again the next week at athletics, this time in the eight hundred. She needs something better to even come close to how she runs in the mornings. Almost out of herself.
Early next Saturday morning, I go to her house and knock on the door. Her father answers. The box is empty. She gets called for the fifteen hundred, and she goes barefoot. I smile at the thought of it.
A few minutes later, her father approaches the fence. The race begins. The other dickhead starts yelling out. And Sophie gets tripped up on the back straight after a lap. She falls among the lead group of five, and the rest of them stretch out, up to maybe twenty-five meters in front.
When she gets back up, it reminds me of that bit in Chariots of Fire when Eric Liddell falls over and runs past everyone to win.
All she needs is the hood and the red pants. She goes past her and holds her with two hundred to go. Just like the mornings, I think, and people have stopped to watch.
They saw her fall and stand and keep going. The discus has stopped, and the high jump. Everything has. All there is is the girl with the sunshine hair and the killer voice breathing and being in front. The other girl comes at her. She pushes for the lead. The last hundred meters nearly kill her. I can see the pain tightening on her face. Her bare feet bleed on their way across the balding grass. She almost smiles from the pain—from the beauty of it.
They run at the line. And the other girl wins. Like always. As they go over the line, Sophie collapses, and down there, on the ground, she rolls onto her back and looks up at the sky. But on her face is the beauty of the morning, and for the first time, I think, she recognizes it: a.
So have you. I want to hear her voice. From her left knee, it runs crookedly down her shin. Her eyes are worth drowning in, and her mouth speaks to me. She lets herself look and be with me. A saint? I list what I am. Taxi driver. Local deadbeat. Cornerstone of mediocrity. Sexual midget. Pathetic cardplayer. I say my final words to her. It feels like the mornings clap their hands.
To make me wake. In the mornings of my eyes, I see three things each time. The first two hold me up with the rising of the sun.
The third strips me and hands shivers to my skin and to my flesh and bones. I spend the late of each night watching repeats of Dukes of Hazzard. The big fat guy always sits there eating marshmallows at his desk. I asked myself when I saw the first episode. Of course.
God, Daisy looks fantastic in her tight jeans. The Doorman shoots me a dirty look every time. Beautiful women are the torment of my existence. The nights and Dukes pass by. I drive my cab with a headache that waits behind me. His words are like froth in my head, boiling, rising, and falling. He gives me the money and I thank him. I think. He slams the door hard.
My head may as well have been in it. A feeling clutters me. It makes me stand up and leave, almost without saying a word. The time has arrived, and I know I need to be standing outside that house at the end of Edgar Street—a house held up by the violence that occurs inside it almost every night.
Milla and Sophie. Now I have to face this. I turn onto Edgar Street, forming fists inside my jacket pockets. With Milla and Sophie, I always felt at ease. They were the nice ones. There was practically no risk involved, unlike here, where all the answers seem to be painful ones. For the wife and the girl and for the husband. And me. Waiting, I pull a forgotten piece of chewing gum from my pocket and put it in my mouth.
It tastes like sickness, like fear. The feeling escalates when the man comes down the road and walks up the porch steps. Silence moves closer then. It clips me, pushing past. It happens. The violence interferes. It sticks its fingers into everything and tears it open. It all comes apart, and I loathe myself for waiting this long to end it. I despise myself for taking the easy options night after night. A hatred is wound up and let go in me. It hacks at my spirit and brings it to its knees, next to me.
It coughs and suffocates as my own hatred for myself becomes overwhelming. The door, I tell myself. It only keels over. It sways off to the side and hits the earth with a silent, beaten thud.
It looks up at the stars. Go, I tell myself again, and this time, I walk on. Everything shakes as I walk up the porch steps and stand at the door. The world wants nothing to do with this. Inside, I hear them. Disturbing her. Reaching through her and abandoning her at the same time. He throws her down and takes her and cuts her open. Refusal is pointless.
Complaint has no use. Some crying crawls to the doorway where I stand. It hobbles out from the gap in the door and lands at my feet. How can you not go in? I ask myself, but still I wait. The door opens a little more, and a presence stands there now, opposite me. The girl is in front of me, planting her fist in her eye to wrestle out the sleep that has lodged there. She wears yellow pajamas with red boats on them, and her toes curl and rub together.
She looks at me, but without fear. I crouch down to look at her properly. I want to tell her I am, but nothing comes out. I can see that the silence from my mouth has all but extinguished the hope she has conjured up. She has to doublecheck if she can believe me. Her voice whispers even quieter. Not tonight. Not ever, it seems. I expect the girl to scream at me. You promised!
I think she understands how physically powerful her father is and how scrawny I am. All she does is stumble over to me and hug me again. The girl tries to crawl inside my jacket as the noise from the bedroom reaches us from inside. She hugs me so tight I wonder how her bones survive. I watch her feet as they turn and walk away beneath the yellow pajamas. She closes the door completely, and I crouch there.
I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears. How can a person sleep when all he can feel are the arms of a tiny kid in yellow pajamas holding on to him in the dark?
I feel insanity will come after me soon. Or at least I should have known. I wanted her to give me the courage. To force me inside. But it failed miserably. Now a worse feeling empties itself into me. At a. It shocks through the air, and I jump up, run to it, look at it. It finally speaks, and I can picture it now, mouthing the words.
The voice is dry, permanently cracked. I hang up and walk slowly out my front door and over to the letter box. The stars are gone completely now and a haze of rain is falling as each of my footsteps step me closer. My hand shivers as I bend down and open the latch.
I reach in. I touch something cold and heavy. My finger touches the trigger. I shudder. One bullet for one man, and this is where I feel like the unluckiest person on earth.
How in the hell did you end up in all this mess? You should have just stayed on the floor in that bank. This has gone too far now. Why have I been chosen for this? I beg, despite knowing without question what I have to do. You were happy with the other two, I castigate myself.
So now you have to do this one. Maybe the person on the phone will come after me. I look through the old record collection my dad gave me. Stress relief. I chuck it on and watch it spin. Even the Proclaimers are giving me the shits tonight.
I pace the room. I am insane. A gun. Those words shoot through me, and I constantly look at it to check this is real. I break and pat him on the stomach, apologize, and make us some coffee. My eyes are itchy and burning as I drive with the window down. The warmth of the air feeds on my eyes, but I let it. The gun is under my mattress, where I left it last night. I tell myself to stop whingeing. Back at the Vacant Taxis lot, I see Audrey kissing one of the new blokes who works there.
Their tongues touch and massage each other. His hands are on her hips, and hers are in the back pockets of his jeans. I knock on his door. The door closes behind me, and Jerry and I watch each other. What do you want? Do I look like a charity to you? The new people get nights. The veterans get days. I get both. He reminds me of Boss Hogg. Thank God for Marge. Impeccable timing. One night only, right? Not a minute later. It needs a service. He makes her life a living hell in many different ways.
For example, all her teachers hate her because Marv was such a smart arse in school. I attempt to eat but fail. I pull the Ace of Diamonds and the gun out and stare at them on the kitchen table.
The hours trickle past. I pick up. Ritchie and me are sitting here bored shitless. Is she with you? Always asking why for no reason. I wonder. Is that all right with you? Since when does Marv have a vocabulary? I was talking to some of the fellas about it today. And every year I nearly break my neck. As expected, the phone rings again, but I lift it and put it straight back down.
I almost laugh at the thought of Marv swearing at the other end in disgust. Get out here for a game of cards! This is the only night I can carry out my plan. One night with the cab. One night with my mark. One night with the gun. I kiss the Doorman on the cheek and walk out.
The gun is in my right jacket pocket. The card is in my left, with a flask of doped vodka. I put a lot of sleeping tablets in it. It better work. Instead, I stay closer to Main Street and wait there. He looms closer in my side mirror and goes past. I pull up beside him and call out quietly. When he gets in, he begins to explain his address.
Without it, I could never go on. I remember Angelina and the way her mother fell to pieces in the supermarket. I have to do this.
You have to, Ed. I nod in agreement. I pull the vodka out of my pocket and offer it to him. He grabs it without a second thought.
I knew it, I congratulate myself. A man like this takes everything he wants without even thinking about it. A man like me thinks too much. The vodka flask drops and pours itself onto him as I drive on. I drive for over half an hour, hit the dirt road, then go for another half hour.
Time to get fierce, or at least as fierce as I get. I get out of the car and go to the passenger side. I open the door. I beat him in the face with the gun. I hit him again. He thinks about a sudden movement but understands very quickly that he can barely pull himself out of the car. Eventually he makes it out, and I walk him up the track with the gun grinding into his back. They can dance around you. Would you like that?
Or should I put this through your skull and let you die fast? Your choice.
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