It's hard to imagine a place like that really exists. People have been judging me my whole life.

I am a friend. I have in my possession two thousand assorted buttons, eight hundred keys, and only one friend. Perhaps it is not something you can understand. I have not often been one before. I will be now.

Are you accusing me of reading? ~ Ridley

She was my destination. I was always on the way to Lena, even when I wasn't. Even when she wasn't on her way to me.

Everyone under the age of sixty called it the War Between the States, while everyone over sixty called it the War of Northern Aggression, as if somehow the North had baited the South into war over a bad bale of cotton.Read

I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green line connecting all the places I had read about. There they were, all the cities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker and pins. In six months, a lot had changed. There was no thin green line that could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.

You can read minds, and you didn't tell me?” Link stared at me like he just found out I was the Silver Surfer. He rubbed his head nervously. “Hey, man, all that stuff about Lena? I was yankin’ your chain.” He looked away. “Are you doin’ it now? You're doin’ it, aren't you? Dude, get out of my head.” He backed away from me and into the bookshelf. “I can't read your mind, you idiot.