The one broken window that permanently wouldn't roll up had destroyed her perfectly curled blond prom-hair, and by the time we got to the gym she looked like Marie Antoinette with bedhead.

...you cannot punish a wet child for the rain.

"Well? Is it true? Did she?" "Did she what?" "You know. Fall outta the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down?"

Hey, Ethan." "Yeah?" "Remember the Twinkie on the bus? The one I gave you in second grade, the day we met?" "The one you found on the floor and gave me without telling me? Nice." He grinned and shot the ball. "It never really fell on the floor. I made that part up.

In history, she wasn't there while we reenacted the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Mr. Lee tried to make me argue the Pro-Slavery side, most likely as punishment for some future liberally minded paper I was bound to write.

She didn't say a work, and I gave up trying, because you couldn't hear either one of us over the shattering noise of hearts breaking and the looming shadow of the last word, the one we refused to say.

They shouldn't call death passing on. They should call it leveling up. Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun.