It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

Mr. Freeman sighs. "No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!

I was good at digging holes. It was the rest of life I sucked at.

He says a million things without saying a word. I have never heard a more eloquent silence.

I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page

Death is funny, when you think about it. Everybody does it, but nobody knows how, exactly how.

So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.