The end of a gun looks very big and very back when it's staring you in the face.

If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences Ive had, that need to be transformed.

There was Kir, red hair combed back and That Expression on his sharp face. Even his freckles looked serious. I'd given up wondering how a freckle-faced teenager could look so much like a disapproving granny.

And now here he was in my kitchen. Smelling like apple pies and looking at me with a direct seriousness that made him even cuter. The bruising spreading up the side of his face had halted, and under it he was very pretty. Not jock-pretty, or the hurtful kind of pretty that tells you a guy is too busy taking care of his royal self to think about you.

I went to the entrance to the restroom, where the hallway did a sharp bend so nobody could peek into the girls' pee-palace.

Christophe, with the careful tone of an adult telling a kid not to pet the nice foaming-rabid pooch.

Oh, the testosterone. You could have cut it with a cafeteria spoon.