When we’re alone together, I’m the destination. When I’m here in her life at school, I’m the disruption.

If I lose it now, I will lose you, too. I know that. I hate it.

Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience.

Someday your prince will come," I assure him. "And the first thing I'm going to say to him is, 'What took you so long?

I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.

This is the hard part about having best friends that I feel no attachment to -- I don't give them any benefit of the doubt. And being best friends is always about the benefit of the doubt.

Even if neither of us got what we wanted, we found freedom in the third choices.