I thought about telling him the truth: 'Oh, nothing. Just having my soul exorcised so I can roam around purgatory, looking for the ghost of the dead cowboy who used to live in my bedroom.

You didn't," John said, stepping from the shadows as he clapped for me, "even hit your head this time.

Back in middle school, Catherine and I had gone through this stage where all we would read were fantasy books. We'd consume them like M&M's, by the fistful, J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander. Susan Boone looked, to me, like the queen of the elves (there's almost always an elf queen in fantasy books). I mean, she was shorter than me and had on a strange lineny outfit in pale blues and greens.

I looked where he was tapping. "Local Girl Missing, Feared Dead" Beneath it was a photo or me-my most recent school photo. "Oh no." My heart filling with dread, i took the paper from Mr. Smith's hands. "Couldn't they have found a better picture?

Why had I taken all those useless classes like bio and German when I should have been taking lipreading?

I’ve never enjoyed myself more than I have the past forty-eight hours, during which I’ve been trapped in a car with one of the worst drivers I’ve ever seen, run up the Spanish Steps and then down again so I could be on time to wait in line to perjuer myself at the American consulate. And I’d like to continue doing those sorts of thing with you on a regular basis for the foreseeable future.

I think we make our own luck. Our parents give us life, but what we do with that life is our own responsibility.