If a girl says not to get her a birthday present that means get me a birthday present and make sure it's jewelry.

It smelled like aging wood and creosote, plastic book covers, and old paper. Old paper, which my mom used to say was the smell of time itself.

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.

The ways I could hurt her and hurt myself. Those two things were intertwined somehow. It's hard to explain, but when you were as closed off as I was the past few months, opening felt as wrong as stripping naked in church.

It’s funny how you can live somewhere your whole life, but not really see it.

No, books. She would have maybe twenty going at a time, lying all over our house--on the kitchen table, by her bed, the bathroom, our car, her bags, a little stack at the edge of each stair. And she'd use anything she could find for a bookmark. My missing sock, an apple core, her reading glasses, another book, a fork.

I didn't want to choose one world. I wanted to be part of both. I didn't want to see only one side of the sky. I wanted to see it all.