It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.

And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.

Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down

Books—they weren't ladders out of the abyss, but they were companions.

I opened the door. He looked down at my shirt and smiled. "Funny," he said. "Don't call my boobs funny," I answered.

But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.

She was not an adventure, she was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.