She wasn't as destructive as Bee. She had never been as dramatic. Rather, she'd slipped carefully, stealthily away from her ghosts.

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee. Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle? Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks. Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone. Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.

But there were times when you felt miserable and you wanted to feel better, and other times when you felt miserable and you figured you would just keep on feeling miserable.

Healing wasn’t always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen after that.

Marnie loved her better and more honestly than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of her mother, who loved her intensely if not honestly.

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time

Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.