That's you, right?' he asks me. 'Yeah.' 'Cute. Not that I, uh, think little kids are cute. Just that you were cute. I mean, you can see how you turned out to be so...oh.

All the things I've thought about love are true. It's beautiful and terrible and it doesn't make things perfect. It ends things, and it brings beginnings. This is mine.

I always wanted to be grown up. When I was little I couldn’t wait to be a teenager and go to high school. When I got there I wanted to be done with it, wanted to get out into the world, the real one, and live in it. The thing is, that world doesn’t exist. All growing up means is that you realize no one will come along to fix things. No one will come along to save you.

Do you really think he was flirting with me?" "Let's see. He gave you candy you hate - I saw your face - and a CD of songs..." He looks at the CD. "All of these are, like, twenty years old at least. Figures. Oh, and he groped your face. Sounds like true love to me.

He's looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain.

Things change. Stuff happens. Life goes on.

I'm so not interesting in having to try and make something out of foil." What, you didn't like the poncho with wraparound leggings?" It was beyond hideou- wait a minute. You watch that show?" My mom loves it." But your suppose to be sulking in the basement getting ready to light fires." What can I say? I'm a failure as a teenager. I watch TV with my mom.