It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old.

That's how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don't have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say.

It came down to the smallest things, really, that a person could do to say I’m sorry, to say it’s okay, to say I forgive you. The tiniest of declarations that built, one on top of the other, until there was something solid beneath your feet. And then… and then. Who knew?

And he left. I watched him walk out – he didn’t say good-bye, he didn’t even look back. It scared me, how easy it was for him to do that.

The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.