Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.

I wasn't disappointed. My expectations had been met.

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

Right. I'd forgotten about her.' He shook his head. 'That keeps happening.

You're awfully philosophical for a girl that just got busted.

And I don’t blame him. I don’t even trust me.

Colin emphatically pushed the book cover shut when he finished reading. "Did you like it?" His dad asked. "Yup," Colin said. He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.