I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.

Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business.

That was part of her, and you used to know it. It's like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.

And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.

I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were...miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around.

It was kind of a beautiful day, finally real summer in Indianapolis, warm and humid - the kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world.

When I think about [characters], I like to think of them in their relationships to each other. In the same way, I think that's how humans are ultimately defined. We are our relationships to one another. And a lot of what's interesting about us happens in the context of other people.