I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again

I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.

And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.

That's the thing about best friends. That's what they do. They keep you from spinning off the edge.

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

This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.

And when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.