“You're broken, and you're fixed. And you're better.”

“It's been about six months since I've had something in a cast. Kids at school laugh and call me a klutz. This girl Charlotte carries my books. My parents are baffled. Will cries. Jesse keeps getting sick.You're broken, and you're fixed.And you're better,”

“Break a body, grow a better body. The worse you're hurt, the stronger you get.”

“When you're grieving, the times you're happy are so much more tragic than the times that you aren't. Because being happy feels fake and it feels temporary and it feels meaningless. And hating being happy is a shitty way to live.”

“I hold my finger up to his lips. He flicks his eyes down to look at it."You're absolved," I tell him.He brings his eyes back up to mine. There's no fucking way he knows what that word means. That's a word I dream someone will say to me.So I put it in his language. "You're free.”

“So once the zookeeper realized it was the monkeys who stole the bananas, he knew there was only one way he'd be able to get them back.""How?" I whispered. My throat was so sore."Don't talk. He had to beat them in shuffleboard, of course.""What?""I said don't talk. Monkeys love shuffleboard."He used a page from a homework assignment he'd failed and a stack of quarters to make a shuffleboard court. I watched the monkeys and the zookeepers have their showdown while I sipped the last of my applejuice."Need more?" Graham asked me without looking up, when my straw skidded against the dry bottom of the box."Uh uh.""You're supposed to drink juice.""I just drank some.""More, though."I shook my head."Drink more juice or the monkeys are going to kill you. The only thing they love more than shuffleboard is beating up dehydrated sick boys.”

“Just wanted to let you know I got in all right. And also that my chest hurts as if I MAY BE DYING, because I accidentally left my heart on your kitchen counter. I hate when that happens.”