#orbiting jupiter

[francesfereshteh]

joseph would have been in the school choir he would have been doing track and football and swimming in the summer and president of the math league and volunteering to tutor freshmen english students and secretary of the student council and working at the bike shop and practicing for his license and helping jack with his chemistry homework and buying jupiter teething toys that he'd bring to her foster family and

[yourfavouritewerido]

nobody talk to me for a while. I just read orbiting Jupiter

[romantacizingregret]

I'm reading this book for my English class, and I took the book home over the weekend since I skipped on Friday. I told my teacher that I wouldn't read ahead, but I ended up doing it anyways, AND HE FREAKING DIES RIGHT AS HES GETTING HIS SHIT TOGETHER!! Like what the hell kind of ending is that ?!?!???

[dirtytransmasc]

(spoilers ahead)

thinking about Orbiting Jupiter again. thinking about "we didn't get the pickup out of the water for three days". thinking about "my father didn't let me go, but he told me it was Mr. Canton who opened the frozen door on Joseph's side, but it was him who lifted his body out of the truck". thinking about Mr. Hurd holding the boy, his son, who just began to smile and trust him, who was just beginning to lean into his touch, in his arms. cold and dead and stiff and wet, little crystals of ice forming on his lashes, sticking down his brows, slicking his hair back.

Did he feel tiny in Mr. Hurds arms? as he lay there, seeping cold into the older man? did Mr. Hurd hold him tight, wishing to instill warmth in him? to comfort him? to make up for not being able to save him? did he keep an apology into his soaked hair? for not saving him? for not saving his daughter? for not adopting him soon enough and officially making him his son while he still breathed? did he cradle his son as the retrieval crew and Mr. Canton watched him? did he cry and beg the gods to change it, because how dare they let his son die for another in front of a church of all places? how long did he hold him before he laid him on the stretcher that surely awaited him, ready to take him to a morgue? did he stroke back his hair as he laid there? did he place his coat over him, because seeing him cold and unprotected from the elements felt too wrong? did he wish to give him one last comfort?

that was his son, not by blood or even law, not truly, but that boy was his son and now he was dead. he died in fear. he died next to a father that never loved him, that ruined everything in his short life. he died with a gun in his father's hand, a threat. he died protecting his baby brother and his family, Mr. Hurds family. he died cold, unable to get free from his belt, life slowly sapping out of him.

he left him there for three days. it wasn't his choice. but his son waited three days in that icy water.

his face was wrong now. it looked wrong. death had changed him. but that was his son and he was dead and he was cold and he was never coming back and that hurt.

and then he had to let him go? he had to let them take his son away? he had to go home to Jack with a look in his eyes that comes with seeing your child's dead body, and he can't hide that look?

that's sickening. this book is sickening. with everything it just leaves you to imagine. I feel sick.

[purplepomegranate08]

[everchanging-cryptid]

just finished reading Orbiting Jupiter finally and AAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHH

It has taken a tremendous effort on my part not to start crying

good lord gary why must you do this

[paintingspaceghosts]

Mr.Canton not getting that Joseph wasn't like that VS Mr. Canton being the one to open the frozen door on Joseph's side

[umbrellagoaway]

I REALLY want to talk about orbiting Jupiter

It's literally such a good book but oh my God it was TRAUMATIZING like I just want to give Jack and Joseph a hug they deserve it I know it's from the POV of Jack but the book doesn't even focus on him enough like he was probably traumatized after the events of the book the topics in this book were NOT school appropriate🗣👆👆