Maybe memories should be left the way they are.

We're so different. You're an intellectual. I'm an idiot." "Don't say that," I yelled. "You're not an idiot, you stupid idiot.

Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories.

...what was it like out there? Kind of describe it to us," Jessa says, beaming at them and then at me. Trini beams at her and there's a lot of beaming happening.

What happens when she's not my memory anymore? What happens when she's not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother's face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who'll be my memory?" Santangelo doesn't miss a beat. "I will. Ring me." "Same," Raffy says. I look at him. I can't even speak because if I do I know I'll cry but I smile and he knows what I'm thinking.

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.

Sit back and get some sleep. Oh great. So if we have an accident and I'm asleep my resistance toward fighting death will be down and I'll wake up in a morgue.