Mae: Do you think we'd be friends if we weren't, like, stuck together in the same town? Like we were stuck together in Girl Scouts? Like... uh... is this just... what's the word?
Bea: Proximity?
Mae: Yeah.
Bea: I don't know. I honestly don't. My entire life feels like running after something that keeps moving away into the distance, while I stay in the same place... and I guess proximity counts for a lot right now.
Bea: Proximity?
Mae: Yeah.
Bea: I don't know. I honestly don't. My entire life feels like running after something that keeps moving away into the distance, while I stay in the same place... and I guess proximity counts for a lot right now.
— "Chapter 3 - Proximity"
Mae: So like, I feel like if I'd been through that, I'd be *more* likely to believe in God or... something. Do you believe in anything at all?
Angus: Um, so like, the constellations, I don't believe there's a whale out there, but I, uh, believe the stars exist and that people put the whale up there. Like, I dunno, we're good at drawing lines through the space between stars. Like we're pattern finders, and we'll find patterns, and we like really put our hearts and minds into it even if we don't mean to. So I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do.
Mae: Pattern finders. I feel like a lot of people don't believe they found God, but like, God found them. Like when they were having bad times like you did.
Angus: Um, so like, the constellations, I don't believe there's a whale out there, but I, uh, believe the stars exist and that people put the whale up there. Like, I dunno, we're good at drawing lines through the space between stars. Like we're pattern finders, and we'll find patterns, and we like really put our hearts and minds into it even if we don't mean to. So I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do.
Mae: Pattern finders. I feel like a lot of people don't believe they found God, but like, God found them. Like when they were having bad times like you did.
Angus: God never did. I was completely alone in the pantry, but a few years later, Gregg did. So like, the stars can stay up there and not give a shit about us, but this whale is pretty cool.
— "Chapter 3 - The Park"
Janitor: Young witch, let me speak wisdom to you: we begin and we end, at night, in the woods. But that is not the whole of the story.
Mae: Forest god, thou hast no power here!
Janitor: Even now, thy end beginneth... Even now, the world you know endeth; and who can say what lieth in the world to come?
Mae: Forest god, thou hast no power here!
Janitor: Even now, thy end beginneth... Even now, the world you know endeth; and who can say what lieth in the world to come?
The Sky Cat: Seconds ago little creatures are coming and they are asking if I am God, and I am asking what God is and they are telling me, and I am not this God, and this God is nowhere.
Mae: Well that's where faith comes in, I guess.
The Sky Cat: Little creatures are explaining faith and moments ago it is the Beginning, and I am here then and I am here now, and there is nowhere for God to be hiding.
Mae: So what am I doing here?!
The Sky Cat: Monstrous Existence.
[...]
The Sky Cat: A great beast is walking through the sands, and they are climbing into the air, and now they are making a tear, and now they are gone, and now you are here. Little creatures are walking through the air, and they are dragging in places and echoes of lives, and they are asking me about God. I am going to tell you something, little creature. You are swimming further and further out to sea, and beyond are things blind and terrible, and I am showing you now... They are blind, but they are seeing you. And you are coming to them. After this, you are not returning here. I am climbing into the air and closing the sky.
[...]
The Sky Cat: There is a hole at the center of everything, and it is always growing. Between the stars I am seeing it. It is coming, and you are not escaping, and the universe is forgetting you, and the universe is being forgotten, and there is nothing to remember it, not even the things beyond. And now there is only the hole... You are atoms, and your atoms are not caring if you are existing. Your atoms are monstrous existence.
[...]
The Sky Cat: Little creature, you are not chosen. There is nothing to choose you. This is going nowhere. We are not meeting again. And the universe is forgetting you, and I am remembering you. But not because I am caring. The beginning is moments ago, the end is moments away. There is no time to forget before all is forgotten.
"Just because that online test said that your best chance at being happy is a situation where everyone already likes you but they mostly leave you alone except when they're delivering food to you... that doesn't mean you can hide in your room and wait for that to happen. That's how hermits are made, Mae. And they die alone in the middle of winter. Waiting for pizza from friends they don't want to see."
— Mae
"I get it. This won't stop until I die. But when I die, I want it to hurt. When my friends leave, when I have to let go, when this entire town is wiped off the map, I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again. And I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something. It means I am something, at least... pretty amazing to be something, at least..."
— Mae
"Do you know why I beat down Andy Cullen 6 years ago? I was playing this video game. You were like dating ghosts or something. And I was really into it. Played it like 24-7. Until this one afternoon, and suddenly, like, something broke. It was just like... pixels. the characters onscreen… I felt like I knew them; they weren't people anymore. They were just shapes. And their lines were just things someone had written: they never existed, they never had feelings. They never would exist, either. And it felt so sad, like I’d just lost these real people, and this whole thing we had, it was just… me. Alone. And like that realization like dumped out of the screen and into real life went outside and the tree out front, I looked at it every day, it was like a friend outside the window. Now it was just a thing... just a thing that was there, growing and eating and just being there, like all the stuff I felt about the tree was just in my head, and there was some guy walking by, and he was just shapes, just like this moving bulk of... stuff. And I cried, because nothing was there for me anymore. It was all just stuff. Stuff in the universe, just... dead."
— Mae
"And the next day was that softball game, and Andy was the pitcher when I was up, and he was just shapes too; just lines someone wrote, like nothing in there. And I was so scared and angry and just... I dunno. Before I knew it I was on top of him, smashing his face in with the bat; just shapes, red shapes all over the grass. After it happened they made me go to therapy, with Dr. Hank, and he made me start a journal... he kinda just said it would help to be able to get my thoughts down. But since this whole thing happened, when I'm alone in a new place, it's all shapes, like back at the softball game. I was doing fine at college for a while, but I couldn't make friends, I was just afraid of being outside or around people alone. And there was this statue of like the founder of something. A really shitty statue, like all rusty metal, and it was these shapes, and he was pointing down at me, and I was so... scared... I didn't leave my dorm room, I either didn't eat or I ate entire pizzas at once. I downed cough syrup just to sleep all the time, and finally I got up the courage to leave. And I came home. Where everything was fine. Where I knew everyone, and it wasn't just... dead shapes. Watching me. Something broke. In my head. In my life."
— Mae
