“Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.”

“Nick looked for his coat on the rack.I snagged mine and shrugged it on without stopping.I swung open the front door of the restaurant.The frigid night wind blew snow into my eyes."Hayden," Nick called me."Close the door," hollered the couples in the booths nearest us.I let go of the door handle, then turned to Nick in the warm room. When he just stood there,staring down at me,I walked back to him."On second thought,"he said, "I don't know about this."I was not going to get dissed again.I said brightly, "Oh,don't be scared.It's easy!" I jerked his puffy parka down from the rack and held it open for him. "Try one arm at a time."Glaring at me,he took the coat and shrugged it on. "Close the door!" shouted the couples around us as we walked outside.”

“He grabbed the back of my parka,but I got the distinct impression he was not trying to be a gentleman by helping me out of it.He just wanted his parka back."When you feel cornered,you'll just fling whatever you've got at people, and you don't care who gets hurt with what.""I am not scared." I slid down from the truck seat into Liz's stepdad's galoshes, then turned to face Nick one last time. "I am not scared of boarding or you,and I will prove it to you tomorrow.If you think I'm going easy on you in the comp just because you have a debilitating injury from yesterday-""That's what you think," he snarked. "I've been going yoga.""-you have another think coming.You will buy me those Poser tickets. And I'm not even taking you.You will hand the tickets over to me,and I'll take someone else.""Who? Your little brother's friends?""No,Everett Walsh." I closed the door softly behind me so as not to alarm sleeping adults,because I was that mature.Even through the door and the rolled up window,I could clearly hear every filthy work Nick uttered, ending with, "Everett [cuss word] Walsh."I opened the passenger door. "Ask not for whom the fire-crotch burns;it burns for thee!" I'd meant this to be an insult.Then I realized it sounded like I wanted Nick.Or like I had a feminine problem.”

“You know what they say. When God slams a door on your fingers, he opens a window so you can scream for help.”

“What the monkey!” My dad slammed through my door and burst into my room wearing nothing but his bathrobe.We all looked up at him in surprise. “You tell us,” I said.“Oh.” My dad actually looked sheepish. “It’s one o’clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn’t realize what wasgoing on in here.”“What’s going on in here?” Cameron asked suspiciously.“Maturity.” My dad backed out of the room and closed the door.”

“You never know the hurt others endure in this world behind the closed windows of their life, or the joy a simple act of kindness can bring.”

“Rather than sleeping myself, I practiced. I practiced taking everything I'd seen in the last few days-every horror, every drop of blood-and locking it away, so deep in my mind that I could pretend that nothing had happened.And then I practiced letting it out.This time, I didn't start with a specific memory. I didn't walk myself step by step through a scene. Instead, I built a room inside my head-a tiny room with white walls and no windows and no doors. No way out.In that room, I put the sound of screams, tearing flesh, and heavy breathing, the smell of rancid blood. Everything I'd been holding back, everything threatening to devour me whole was there-in the ceiling of that room, the corners, the floor.”