It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister. "Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.

For the first time in my life I've done something for me and by choice and not because somebody told me it was good or bad.

Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.

The worst is knowing I can't tell anybody what's happening -or what's happened- to me. Not even my mom.

In my head I try and reach back, through the fence, past the smoke; I try and grab his hand and pull. Alex, come back. There is nothing to do but sink. The hours close around me, encase me completely, like a tomb.