High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change.

He told me this while ripping through his duffel bag, throwing clothes into drawers with reckless abandon. Chip did not believe in having a sock drawer or a T-shirt drawer. He believed that all drawers were created equal and filled each with whatever fit. My mother would have died.

I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

If I had cared about her as I should have, as I thought I did, how could I have let her go?

You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet.

the point is that there are always answers.

What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.