This is pretty much the answer to every problem you encounter in suburbia: plant a tree, and hope you don't see anyone's privates.

Like I've been sketched by an amateur artist: if you don't look too closely, it's all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

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

My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy - but it's never him, and each time it isn't, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.

We're killers, all of us: We kill our lives, our past selves, the things that mattered. We bury them under slogans and excuses.

I’ve been trying so hard not to think his name, not to even breathe the idea of him

Raven has lost deeply, again and again, and she, too, has buried herself. There are pieces of her scattered all over. Her heart is nestled next to a small set of bones buried beside a frozen river, which will emerge with the spring thaw, a skeleton ship rising out of the water”.