And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long.

If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude get stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.

So we gave up. I'd finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be seen. We'd failed, maybe, but some mysteries aren't meant to be solved.

I was so tired of her getting upset for no reason. The way she would get sulky and make references to the freaking oppressive nature of tragedy or whatever but then never said what was wrong, never have any goddamned reason to be sad. And I just think you ought to have a reason. My girlfriend dumped me, so I'm sad. I got caught smoking, so I'm pissed off. My head hurts, so I'm cranky. She never had a reason, Pudge. I was just so tired of putting up with her drama. And I just let her go. Christ.

I didn't want to look at them, so I looked away, and to look away was to look at Augustus.

I smiled. She smiled. I believed the smile.

Good friends are hard to find and impossible to forget.