And in high school, people are always watching so there's always a reason to pose.

And concentrating on the spot where the two spindles should be is the closest I get to looking Hannah's eyes as she tells my story.

And it feels strange, almost sad, to walk through ther empty halls. Each step I take sounds so lonely.

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.

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.

You need to figure out what you want, Josh. If that means you need to swim against the tide to get it, at least youre aiming for something that could make you very happy.

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.