What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me! But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.

Warily, she dares to allow me a smile. "It's okay. It's just...I'm not too good at talking to people." She looks away again as her shyness smothers her. "So, do you think it'd be all right if we don't talk?

All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.

So many humans. So many colors.

But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.

You should know it yourself- a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.