“Each of those photos proves a different thing. All those things add up to the truth.”

“She needed friends, and a life, and this is how you acquired those things: by talking to strangers. Everyone was a stranger, all on equal footing in strangerhood.”

“She glances at each of her three companions, at the protective veneers they’re all wearing, trying to mask the different lies they’ve told one another. The lies they’re all continuing to try to maintain. Hoping these lies will carry them through the rest of their full and satisfying lives, despite the truths they’ve chosen not to tell the most important people in their worlds.”

“She knows that one of the most dangerous, self-destructive indulgences is to go around proving how smart you are. It’s the type of thing that gets people shot.”

“After all, she herself had done the very worst thing imaginable. And she was a good person. Wasn’t she?”

“It was becoming difficult to separate her own decisions from those made by others, for her, on behalf of themselves.”

“Things always end more suddenly than expected.”