She got under the covers and put her arms around the bag. She could smell Tibby. It used to be she couldn't smell Tibby's smell in the way you couldn't smell your own; it was too familiar. But tonight she could. This was some living part of Tibby still here and she held on to it. There was more of Tibby with her here and now than in what she had seen in the cold basement room that day.

The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.

Tibby cried into her soup when it finally came. "I'm scared... ," she told it. The carrots and peas made no reply, but she felt better for having told them.

Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.

She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly.

I look back on my 20s. It's supposed to be the prime of your life, the most vital, the most beautiful. But you're making your critical decisions and sometimes your most critical mistakes.

The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Got that? -Coach Brevin