There Will Be No Violins: 2

Quinn lives with a profound, but hard-to-put-your-finger-on awareness that she has lost something, and that what she has lost can never be found again. That a part of her has been forever altered. That there is a wilderness — somewhere out there — through which nobody can guide her, and she was supposed to have been issued a map, but she might have misplaced it.

She has felt this way since childhood. As if she were a glitch in the system.

She doesn’t understand why.

She doesn’t understand that there are ripples.

In everything, of course, but specifically in reality.

They emanate from the absurdity of our interactions with each other and the cruelty of random chance, deliberate human intention, and the sudden jolts of life that come on us without warning.

Quinn, for whatever reason you like, is one of these ripples, slowly drifting out from an undefined, unknowable moment of impact. For whatever reason you like — any at all — her very existence disturbs reality.

Quinn has been shedding atoms, molecules of reality her whole life.

Every few months, Quinn grows acutely aware that there is something wrong. She becomes determined to gain control of her life.

She instals e-reading apps on her phone. She reads several pages a day of a Top 20 novel. She buys Malcolm Gladwell books on sale. Her journal entries become philosophical.

She eats vegan food.

It lasts for a few weeks at a time.