My Mechanical Romance

“The world is not very helpful to a smart girl. More often it will try to force you inside a box. But I urge you not to listen.”

“It's a lot. Trying all the time. Trying not to screw up, just makes me feel so tired. There's all this pressure to plan for a future, you know? And like, what future?”

“It's really, really hard to recognize someone as the villain in someone else's life when you're pretty sure you love them both.”

“You're such a nerd.""Oh, I know. My mom tells me all the time, but apparently nerds are hot now.”

“You don’t have to make the world perfect just so people will love you,”

“There’s the faintest glow from the streetlight outside on her hair, and she smells like sawdust and strawberry lip balm and for a second, I really don’t care what happens next. I start to understand why I got so pissed when Dash asked her to homecoming, and why I was so upset when she didn’t ask for my help with our Regionals bot, and why I sprint out of practice every day just to stand next to her and poke around at wires. I get why I asked her to come to a kids’ soccer game with me and why I bought her that silly little drawer knob in the shape of a bird. I get why it matters to me that she’s hurting.Because I think about her all the time. Because she surprises me, because she makes me laugh, and because this, whatever it is with her, is the only thing I ever do that’s easy.Because wherever I am, I want her close by.”

“They definitely don’t mean the version whose Spotify is currently paused on Taylor Swift’s entire discography so he can learn all the words that make her smile, even when she doesn’t want to. Especially then.”

“He smiles, and I know that win or lose, Teo Luna and I are made of a strong foundation. What he and I have together is the best thing we’ve ever built.”

“I’m only good when I’m with you, Teo,” I say, and then, because it’s so pathetically true, I swallow hard. “I’m at my best when I’m with you.”

“Always best to look stupid in private, in my opinion.”

“Everyone at this school has plans, and then they want me to have plans, and I’m just so overwhelmed by their good intentions that I constantly feel the need to lie down for a solid five minutes before trying again.”

“It’s probably really stupid how much it unravels me to look at her right then, but I’ve never seen eyes that make me think about the mysteries of the universe the way hers do. It’s like walking through the redwoods. Like feeling the earth beneath your feet while knowing there are things flying free above you, and things living and breathing below you, and for a moment you just feel connected to everything. Like there’s some sort of unstoppable tide of existence and you’re part of it, even for just a second.”

“The world is not very helpful to a smart girl,” says Ms. Voss. “More often it will try to force you inside a box. But I urge you not to listen.”

“I should not be wasting my time on high school boys when I was clearly born to be some artist's muse, which is a calling I will probably age into around my late twenties.”

“I promise I'll still like you, even if I ever have a problem you can't fix.”

“We all know the male ego is notoriously fragile. Even the cute ones are a lost cause,” she points out with a lamenting sip, reminding us that she does not like boys. (She’s just unfortunately attracted to them.)”

“he smells like clean laundry and summer and I hate it. I hate all of it.”

“So all I can do is miss him, even though he’s right there in front of my face.”

“I like Taylor Swift, too. I’m human, after all.”

“There's no such thing as a mind for one subject or another. You have a mind that works, and works well. So use it.”

“I wish I could say it doesn’t bother me to hear Richardson mock us for being girls, but it’s totally frustrating. Not because it’s wrong—which it is—but because it’s exactly the sort of thing that prevents most girls from trying. The girls who get ahead are the ones who can let stuff like that just roll off their backs, but that’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. There’s a lot more kinds of strength than just being outwardly tough, and it’s a lot to ask of anyone to succeed when most people in the room are waiting to see you fail.”

“If I'm pushing you into something that you have no passion for, Isabel, then tell me so. But if you're only hesitating because you have doubts in your abilities, then let me ask you, sincerely, to take a risk.”

“I’m pretty sure she and I are both considering how nothing definitive comes easily to her. She told me once that she never understood how people could be so certain about their futures, or about anything, but now she sounds sure about this. She looks it, too.”

“honestly? physics is easy. what's hard is feeling like i want to be invisible all the time.”

“It’s all very La La Land, which is a movie I once had to explain to my mother. (“The story was always about their dreams,” I told her while she cried over lost love.)”

“I’ve always believed that there’s a possibility for everything in the world to collide for a single perfect moment, and that sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to have one for yourself. This one is ours.”

“I'm with him, but that's exactly the problem. If I'm not enough with him...then I'll never be enough without him. And just because he chose me once doesn't mean he'll choose me every time, especially when I'm no longer so convenient.”

“Are you into opera or something?”“Sometimes,” she says with a shrug. “I don’t really like to close the door on anything. There’s something interesting about most things, I think.”

“You got a taste of what it's like," Neelam says. "But I've been competing in math and science my whole life. I've been told girls can't win math competitions or can't built robots my whole life. My brothers are all pre-med, but I've been told every single day to act like a lady, to smile and be polite, to be pretty and dainty-and what boy ever has to hear that? Not once," she snaps, "and what you don't understand is that when you come into this world unprepared and unfocused and without even a fundamental understanding of what you're doing, you have nothing to fight back with. Take Mac," Neelam says, suddenly adamant. "You saw how much he favors Teo and Dash, right? But when you pointed it out he called you a bad teammate, he told you to work harder. I work hard because no matter what I do, people will always tell me I should have done more. So I do the most. Because I understand that it doesn't end here!"Neelam rises to her feet, agitated, and starts pacing in front of me. "If you really want to be an engineer, then get ready," she says with a glare at me. "Get ready to hear no. Get ready to hear you can't. Get ready for I just don't like her or she's not likable. Sure, you're lucky, you're pretty and bubbly and people like you," she adds with another look of annoyance, "but you're even worse off than I am for that, because they won't take you seriously. This team? This team only takes you seriously because Teo Luna did, and lucky you." She practically spits it at me. "Lucky you, because he doesn't take me seriously, and thanks to him nobody on our team ever will.”

“And you don’t understand how hard it is to be a girl competing with boys who don’t even realize that they, unlike us, are perceived as more competent no matter what they do.”"You got a taste of what it’s like,” Neelam says. “But I’ve been competing in math and science my whole life. I’ve been told girls can’t win math competitions or can’t built robots my whole life. My brothers are all pre-med, but I’ve been told every single day to act like a lady, to smile and be polite, to be pretty and dainty—and what boy ever has to hear that? Not once,” she snaps, “and what you don’t understand is that when you come into this world unprepared and unfocused and without even a fundamental understanding of what you’re doing, you have nothing to fight back with.”