Idiotically, it occurred to me that my pink underwear didn’t match my purple bra, as if boys even notice such things.

I told him they built a statue of Schultz, and then he said that a monument is cold comfort to a dead man, and then I said that the statue was built not for Schultz, but for us--to remind us how to be human.

Failing to grapple with complexity actually turns out to be a pretty bad life strategy.

All hurt is brain hurt.

She did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think the hate invincible," with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.

The abbreviated exam week meant that Wednesday was the last day of school for us. And all day long, it was hard not to walk around, thinking about the lastness of it all.

Even with everything broken and decided inside her she couldn't quite allow herself to disappear for good.