Good for you, Ethan." That's what my poor mama would've said. Ma'am.

Nothin' wrong with havin' a cat in the house. They can see what most people can't, like the folks in the Otherworld when they cross back over - the good ones and the bad. And they get rid a mice.

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.

A kiss that was every bit as big and every bit as small as a kiss can be.

You couldn't take two roads. And once you were on one, there was no going back.

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.

Because life goes on, L. The birds do their thing, and the bees do theirs. Seeds get scattered, and everything grows back.