There's hope around the corner.

The sudden silence is horrifying, and it seems to catch my mother off guard. A tiny whimper escapes her, the sound amplified in the stillness. Surely, my father hears her now; surely he and I can't go on pretending she isn't crying.

I was lucky enough not to face any required summer reading lists until I went to college. So I still think of summer as the best time to read for fun.

I wish, peevishly, that he didn't know anything about how soldiers sleep, how they protect their fellow soldiers. It would be nicer if I could share the cloaks warmth with him, if we could lie with our faces together, whispering into the night.

bitter is a bad way to live!

...even the most independent people sometimes needed help. And if I'd learned nothing else from my life thus far, it was that you don't always end up where you think you're going.

He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes. This is wrong, he thought. Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil.