Raven jerks and stiffens. For a second, I think she is only surprised: Her mouth goes round, her eyes wide. Then she begins teetering backward, and I know that she is dead. Falling, falling, falling . . .

Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.

Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.

It won't matter if nobody ever thinks I'm pretty (although sometimes I wish, just for a second, that somebody would)

We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.

Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

Black is too morbid; red will set them on edge; pink is too juvenile; orange is freakish