Dash is for sure straight!" Boomer announced. "He has a super-pretty ex-girlfriend named Sofia, who I think he still has a thing for, and also, in seventh grade, there was a game of spin the bottle and it was my turn and I spun and it landed at Dash, but he wouldn't let me kiss him.

Feeling someone else's anger is bad; being left alone is worse.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.

It was like everyone suddenly knew what mattered. Money didn't matter. Politics didn't matter. Tabloid news didn't matter. No-compassion mattered. Calm mattered. Respect mattered. Did it really take something of this magnitude to make us realize this?

Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends.

She stays in the same spot, anchored by the profound, desperate loneliness of a bad relationship.

That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something.