“So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.”

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.”

“I realized all thosetimes I'd felt people stareat me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, ableto reflect back theexpression I thought only I wore, the feelings only I felt. Until now, thismoment, as our eyes met. If therewas a way to recognize something you'd never seen but still knew by heart, I feltit as I looked at hisface. Finally, someone understood.”

“I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it -- it wan't Will's. It was mine.”

“Once, this had been the life I’d wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn’t believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I’d never known anything else.”

“And I felt comfort. Finally. All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this. I knew, deep down, it was more complicated than that, but watching Jason, I was hopeful. He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I had to wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me. So I moved myself closer to him, and I'd been there ever since.”

“But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.”