“Feels like I've known him since before he got to the world—longer than he knew himself, truthfully. Seems like we'd been friends really...Somewhere before life on earth...”

“I feel like the world stopped. And I got off...and then it started spinning again, but too fast for me to hop back on. I feel like I'm still trying to get a...to get some kind of foothold on living”

“It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked—people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time.”

“Seems like every time life starts straightening itself out, something's gotta go and happen.”

“But it's what the world does to people. It makes some of us feel ugly and it makes some of us look like criminals, like angry fools.”

“Maybe this was our last summer as best friends. I feel like something's going to change now and I'm not going to be able to change it back.—Margaret”

“Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.”