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

And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers.

The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. So much depends upom a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

They were angry, I thought. Horrified. These teenagers, with their hormones, making out beneath a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father.

Margo's beauty was a kind of sealed vessel of perfection--uncracked and uncrackable.

It always happened like this: he would look and look for the keys to Satan’s Hearse and then finally he’d just give up and say, “Fine. I’ll take the fugging bus,” and on his way out the door, he’d see the keys. Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus; Katherines appear when you start to disbelieve the world contains another Katherine; and, sure enough, the Eureka moment arrived just as he began to accept it would never come.

Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.