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.

There were only two kinds of people in our town. ―The stupid and the stuck- ―The ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else finds a way out.

Even when I didn't know anything else about where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. You were my Wayward, even then. Everything always brought me back to you. Everything.

The stuffs you're good at and the stuffs you're bad at are just different parts of the same thing. Same goes for people you love and the people you don't. And the people who love you and the people who don't. The only thing that mattered was that you cared about a few people.

Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person's whole life?

Just as I lay back, she sat up. I sat up, and she flopped back down. Awkward. That was my every move when it came to her. Now we were both lying down, staring up at the blue sky.

I don't know what happened. One minute, I was dreamin' about a fat piece of George Clooney and a hot date with some brown sugar pound cake, and the next thing I knew, the house was coming down on us.