When you hold people up for ridicule, you have to take responsibility when other people act on it.

You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.

God, I am freaking out. Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe I just look guilty of something and he’s picking up on that.

Could be my soul mate / two kindred spirits / Maybe we're not / I guess we'll never / know

When the right moment appears, the key is to not let it pass.

Personally, I never understood the power of having books written about your experience - whatever that experience may be - until I wrote one and started hearing from teens. I just got an email from a reader who said that "Thirteen Reasons Why" was the first time they had felt understood. A book shouldn't be anybody's first time feeling understood and that's where censorship bothers me. These books need to be out there.

I take a slow sip of lukewarm coffee, reopen the book, and read the words scribbled in red ink near the top: Everyone needs an olly-olly-oxen-free.