The way two people can end up in the same place, find each other in a crowd, and change their lives and the lives of the people around them forever... It makes you believe in fate. And fate gives love some authority. Like it's been stamped with approval from above, if you believe in above. A godly green light. Some destined significance.

You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.

Yeah. When you want what's real and you try to find that in high school, you might as well be looking for a mossy rock beside a babbling brook on the corner of Sixth and Pine in downtown Seattle.

I tended to give a book a chance and another chance and another, sometimes seeing it all the way to the end, still hoping for for it turn out different. Maybe I was confused about what you owed a book. What you owed people, for that matter, real or fictional.

I may be nervous," I say. "Okay, I'm really glad you said that, because I just went to the back room to put on more deodorant." Sebastian says.

You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.

Family was even a bigger word than I imagined, wide and without limitations, if you allowed it, defying easy definition. You had family that was supposed to be family and wasn't, family that wasn't family but was, halves becoming whole, wholes splitting into two; it was possible to lack whole, honest love and connection from family in lead roles, yet to be filled to abundance by the unexpected supporting players.