“Almost, I thought. Out loud I said, "Just because we don't see eye to eye on everything doesn't mean we can't be close.Auden”

“Just because we don’t see eye to eye on everything doesn’t mean we can’t be close.”

“It's so weird," Chloe said finally, "that it doesn't feel different now." "What?" I asked her. "Everything," she said. "I mean, this is what we've been waiting for, right? High school's over. It's a whole new thing but it feels exactly the same." "That's because nothing new has started yet," Jess told her. She had her face tipped up, eyes on the sky above us. "By the end of the summer, then things will feel new. Because they will be." Chloe pulled another tiny bottle—this time gin—out of her jacket pocket and popped the top. "It sucks to wait, though," she said, taking a sip of it. "I mean, for everything to begin.”

“This thought was interrupted, suddenly, by a crash from the front entrance. We all looked over just in time to see Adam bending back from the glass, rubbing his arm."Pull open," Maggie called out. As Leah rolled her eyes, she said, "He never remembers. It's so weird.”

“That sucks, though," Wes said finally, his voice low. "You're just setting yourself up to fail, because you'llnever get everything perfect.""Says who?"He just looked at me. "The world," he said, gesturing all around us, as if this party, this deck encompassed itall. "The universe. There's just no way. And why would you want everything to be perfect, anyway?""I don't want everything to be perfect," I said. Just me, I thought. Somehow. "I just want—”

“Because' I repeated, as a breeze blew over us, "sometimes things just happen. That aren't expected. Or on the list." "Such as?" he asked"I don't know," I said, frustrated. "That's the point. It would be out of the blue, taking us by surprise. Something we might not be prepared for.""But we will be prepared," he said, confused. "We'll have the list.”

“I don't know. Just because someone's pretty doesn't mean she's decent. Or vice versa. I'm not into appearances. I like flaws, I think they make things interesting.”