Heart Breaking, I think that if Dad, staring down the sight of a 10mm, would only tell me he loves me, I could easily change my mind... ...but he won't.

A breeze blows up, touching my cheek like a little child's kiss. It flutters a piece of paper. "Trash, out there? Must belong to one of us." We move closer, and when I reached for it, I find...... a perfect paper airplane.

I hate this feeling. Like I'm here, but I'm not. Like someone cares. But they don't. Like I belong somewhere else, anywhere but here, and escape lies just past that snowy window, cool and crisp as the February air.

It is hard to believe that something that seems so permanent was once so different. Change. I guess that really is one thing you can count on.

Believe it or not, I sold my first novel, Crank, with only seventy-five pages complete. It was in verse then, and it was hard-hitting then.

TRIAD: Three separate highways intersect at a place no reasonable person would ever want to go. Three lives that would have been cut short, if not for hasty interventions by loved ones. Or Fate. Three people, with nothing at all in common except age, proximity, and a wish to die. Three tapestries, tattered at the edges and come unwoven to reveal a single mutual thread.

She's incredible, not that she's perfect. But you once said imperfections create character.