You went up a girl and came down a woman.

People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors.

Midnight passes and I'm twenty-five days and a million years from becoming a man.

It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.

TODD!" I yell again and I reach him and his Noise opens even farther and wraps around me like a blanket and I'm grabbing him to me, grabbing him to me like I'll never let him go and he calls out in pain but his other arm is grabbing me back - "I thought you were dead," he's saying, his breath on my neck. "I thought you were dead." "Todd," I say and I'm crying and the only thing I can say is his name. "Todd.