My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.

How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again?

He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.

He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine.

If something happened to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?

The people I'm stuck with in my life now aren't sucking the life out of me, they just suck.

When he wins the bet, I tell Griggs that it will take me a lifetime to save up two trillion dollars and he tells me that he's only giving me seventy years.