“I thought about my Willa, about her blind-smiling at me from the hospital bed where she laid and where she died a few hours later, thought about the girl my Willa was in the picture she’d shown me, smiling out from inside the old lady Willa on the night she died. I thought about that wild Willa picture, and about the certain order she’d pulled that picture and others out of her hatbox to share with me on the summer nights when we were doing our secret sharing. And I thought about people saving certain pictures for a reason, saving and discarding according to the self-told story of themselves, how mainly it had nothing to do with who they were in the everyday, but instead, who they were in their special caught moments. How they held onto those pictures, and they held.”

“There were so many times during those years, though, as we moved from one house to another, that I would find myself thinking about my sister. Usually it was late at night, when I couldn‟t sleep, and I‟d try to picture her in her dorm room forty-odd miles and a world away. I wondered if she was happy, what it was like out there. And if maybe, just maybe, she ever thought of me.”

“I couldn't tell what colour her eyes were. They were wet and dark and shining, like pools of deep, still water. For a second I thought I could see pictures in them, like I was looking right inside her to where her memories were. She smiled, and I wondered if she knew what I'd seen or if she could see the pictures I kept hidden inside myself.”

“She thought about Cheryl’s contention that this was young love, and about how she’d feel if they were ever to break up and she had to look back on this moment as an episode in a life that was full of people she didn’t even know now. The thought made her want to cry.”

“I think she cried at my funeral. It's not that I'm conceited or anything, but I'm pretty sure. Sometimes I can actually picture her talking about me to some guy she feels close to. Talking about me dying. About how they lowered me into the grave, kind of shrivelled up and pitiful, like an old chocolate bar. About how we never really got a chance. And afterwards the guy fucks her, a fuck that's all about making her feel better.”

“About half a mile from the tunnel, Sam stopped the car, and I climbed in back. Patrick played the radio really loud so I could hear it, and as we were approaching the tunnel, I listened to the music and tought about all the things that people have said to me over the past year. I thought about Bill telling me I was special. And my sister saying she loved me. And my mom, too. And even my dad and brother when I was in the hospital. I thought about Patrick calling me his friend. And I thought about Sam telling me to do things. To really be there. and I just thought how great it was to have friends and a family.”