Do you want to guess what's in here?" I asked Dash. "I think I've got it figured out already. There's a new supply of red notebooks in there, and you want us to fill them in with clues about the works of, say, Nicholas Sparks." "Who?" I asked. Please, no more broody poets. I couldn't keep up. "You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked. I shook my head. "Please don't ever find out," he said.

That's because you're interpreting it the wrong way. I didn't mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I mean that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changes how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable.

We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn't trust a bookstore, what could you trust?

I deciced if I were ever to get into booze and women, my line would be, 'Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you. . . . Are you perchance free this evening?

The Beatles, they had it all figured out, okay? "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The first single. It's effing brilliant, right?... That's what everybody wants, Nicky. They don't want a twenty-four-hour hump sesh, they don't want to be married to you for a hundred years. They just want to hold your hand.

Wherever I went, I was on the wrong end of the stampede.