The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

I didn’t know it would be like this,” he says in a whisper. And then: “I’m scared.

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.

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.

Funny how time heals. Like that bullet in my ribs. It's there, I know it's there, but I can barely feel it at all anymore.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

I get that rush that comes when you know you're doing something wrong and are getting away with it, like stealing from the school cafeteria of getting tipsy at a family holiday without anyone knowing it.