Don't give up on me now. I'm sorry. I guess that's an odd thing to say. Because isn't that what I'm doing? Giving up?

If time was a string connecting all of your stories, that party would be the point where everything knots up. And that knot keeps growing and growing, getting more and more tangled, dragging the rest of your stories into it.

Because what if I got to know you and you turned out to be just like they said? What if you weren’t the person I hoped you were? That, more than anything, would have hurt the most.

Everything about it was false. Right then, in that office, with the realization that no one knew the truth about my life, my thoughts about the world were shaken.

And after I dropped him off, I took the longest possible route home... I explored alleys and hidden roads I never knew existed. I discovered neighborhoods entirely new to me. And finally... I discovered I was sick of this town and everything in it.

The Golden Rule will always be good advice!

I could picture life—school and everything else—continuing on without me. But I could not picture my funeral. Not at all. Mostly because I couldn’t imagine who would attend or what they would say.