Yes, I was good at reading people. I studied them so I could put them in my novels.

The TV said you should ignore bullies and they would stop harassing you. In practice this worked about half the time. The other half, you ended up with two tall boys shadowing you through a trailer park, their fingers taking little nips at your clothes, like dogs.

My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such assholes.

When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.

The nurse knocked softly on the door of the examining room and wheeled in a shiny silver tray displaying neatly arranged instruments of torture.

No. I just don't want to be a detective. They figure out what happened after the fact, when it's too late. I want to prevent it from happening.

It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we'd be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That's where people got into trouble.