Charley > Books: favorites‎ (143)

Dove ran hard, flinging her head back, her mouth open to the sky. Despite the panic her eyes were bright and she was smiling. I was scared, with that crystalline childish fear of being caught and punished. That fear thrashed behind my ribcage like a bird in cupped hands. Perhaps the last truly childlike instance of that emotion I'd ever feel. That fear is a kind of magic. As you get older, the texture of your fear changes. You're no longer afraid the things you had absolute faith in as a child-that you'd die of convulsions from inhaling the gas from a shattered lightbulb, that chewing apple pips brought on death by cyanide poisoning, or that a circus dwarf had actually bounced off a trampoline into the mouth of a hungry hippo. We stopped believing in the things my uncle believed in. Even if your mind wants to go there, it has lost the nimbleness it needs to make the leap. That magic gets kicked out of you, churched out, shamed out-or worse, you steal it from yourself. It gets embarrassed out of you by the kids who run the same stretch of streets and grown ups who say its time to put away childish things. By degrees, you kill your own magic. Before long, your fears become adult ones-crushing debts and responsibilities, sick parents and sick kids, the possibility of dying unremembered or unloved... fears of not becoming the person you were so certain you'd grow up to be. Looking back, I wish I'd relished those final instances of childish fear, that saccharine sweet taste of terror, curdling like sour milk in my mouth.