You watch yourself. One day you're going to pick a hole in the sky and the universe is gonna fall right through. Then we'll all be in a fix

It almost felt like she was sucking it all out of me, like she sucked on that sticky red lollipop, the one she kept licking as she drove.

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.

Oblivion eyes on a cereal box, the warm blinds of a father lost and last to know lost and last to love last boy lost you can't see even a bubble once it's popped

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.

Lying on the ceiling. Refusing to go to school. Not opening up to me. Climbing water towers. "No, she's all right."

It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class--usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn't have dared to say. It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't.