Here's a tip. If you touch a girl, even as joke, and she pushes you off, leave... her... alone. Don't touch her. Anywhere! Just stop. Your touch does nothing but sicken her.

I've always loved brainstorming with other writers, and I consider having my work critiqued a part of that brainstorming.

But I do know which is the least popular. The truth.

I'm listening to someone give up. Someone I knew—someone I liked. I'm listening... but still, I'm too late.

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 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.

Whenever I'm out late she makes a sandwich for my school lunch. I always protest and tell her not to, saying I'll make my own when I get home. But she likes it. She says it reminds her of when I was younger and needed her.