I wished for what Cassiel Roadnight had. I wished with every single breath.
I didn't think about the knife-edge that being him would force me to live on. I failed to see it. I refused to look down.
In this quote, Chap is realizing in retrospect the consequences for choosing to impersonate Cassiel. This harkens back to the theme of deception and façades; living life as someone else, lying constantly, is exhausting. This brings up the question of whether the benefits of deception could ever outweigh the cost. In becoming Cassiel, Chap obtained the family and resources he desired, but the cost was never-ending fear of being found out.
Perfectly good things get thrown away all the time; perfectly good things and perfectly good people.
In this quote, Chap is thinking about his rucksack, which he found in a Dumpster, using it to draw a parallel to his own life. He believes he himself was "thrown away;" after his Grandad failed to return, the government took him away from his house, effectively estranging him from his entire family, and put him in foster care, from which he ran away and lived on his own.
This quote has an unintentional double meaning for Chap; unbeknownst to him, he was rescued as a baby from a house fire by the girl who set it, and she just left him with the random guy she stayed with after the fire, never looking back. He actually belongs to the Roadnight family; he just doesn't know it. In that sense, they threw him away.
It was like being on camera, it was like acting in a never-ending play, it was like living in a cage.
Here, Chap is thinking about the negative consequences of his deception; by assuming the position of Cassiel, he set himself up for continuous lying, fear, and anxiety about being found out. It goes back to the theme of façades: keeping one up for an extended period of time is exhausting.
On camera, actors are afraid of messing up for posterity; on stage, actors are afraid of breaking character and exposing themselves for who they are; both of these produce a kind of cage of fear. By assuming Cassiel's identity, Chap imprisoned himself in such a cage.
He fell and broke both hips. Just like that. One, two, three, snap.
Here, Chap is remembering his Grandad's accident. He was out in the ice, on an errand to the store, and he never came back. Chap is pondering the nature of abrupt change; in the span of a few seconds, something you had might be lost. As he says later in the chapter, "I couldn't believe something so good could be there one day and then gone the next."
