...she made her home in between the pages of books.

I hear laughter and someone asks if I need help, not in a nice way. I snarl, "What I need is for your mother to have thought a little harder nine months before your birthday.

I tired the back door -- unlocked. Truley the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me.

Isabel had gone silent in a way that shouted the silence to me.

Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try.

Do you think I just turn my secrets out for everyone?" He is unfazed. "I didn't know they were secrets," he says. "Or I wouldn't have asked.

Death smells like birthday cake.