I see what grief does, how it strips you bare, shows you all the things you don't want to know. That loss doesn't end, that there isn't a moment where you are done, when you can neatly put it away and move on.

Things end. People leave. And you know what? Life goes on. Besides, if bad things didn't happen, how would you be able to feel the good ones?

I felt nothing all the time, and it had started to feel normal. It should have scared me, but it didn't.

And you… do you know what you are?” “Stupid?” “Beautiful,” he says, his face turning red.

How come you like Josh so much anyway? All he does is sit around drinking overpriced coffee and bitching about how awful things are" "He cares about the world." "If he cared about the world, he'd donate the ten thousand dollars he must spend on coffee every year to charity. That would be doing something.

..."Are you okay?" he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine.

Little Alice, all hollowed out, so easy to smash into a million little pieces.