Time jumps. It leaps. It pours away like water through fingers.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried.

Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents' smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glinstening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light - everything so clear and perfect I'm sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it

I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?

When we get out of highschool we'll look back and know we did everything right, that we kissed the cutest boys and went to the best parties, got in just enough trouble, listened to our music too loud, smoked too many cigarettes, and drank too much and laughed too much and listened too little, or not al all.

I’m with Julian,” I say at last. This, after all, is what I have chosen.