How in the world was I alone? Because I wanted to be. That's all I can say. It's all that makes sense to me.

Everything...affects everything

No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.

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 my love were an ocean, there would be no more land. If my love were a desert, you would see only sand. If my love were a star- late at night, only light. And if my love could grow wings, I'd be soaring in flight.

I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.

The young adult literature is relatively new - it just kind of exploded in the 2000s. When I grew up, there weren't bookstores with sections dedicated to teen lit, nor was my generation raised reading books written specifically for us. Because of that, today we still think of books for teens as children's books and so when you write a book that includes sensitive topics, it just seems even more controversial. What's troubling to me about that is these are issues adults know that teens deal with. Not writing about them makes them something we don't, or can't talk about.