It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.

Fourth period I have "life skills", which is what they call gym when you're old enough to be offended by forced physical activity (Elody thinks they should call it slavery instead, for accuracy).

The reason you can never go home again isn't necessarily that places change, but people do. So nothing ever looks the same.

For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn't know: I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.

We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven't chosen at all.

It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.