My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

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

I lived too much in my head instead of the real world.

Some people come into your life and leave a mark.

We'd need a miracle," he says. "A real one. Do you think those happen anymore?

This was a memory I wanted to keep, whole, and recall again and again. When I was fifty years old I wanted to remember this moment on the porch, holding hands with Cameron while he shared himself with me. I didn’t want it to be something on the fringes of my memory like so many other things about Cameron and myself.

. . .There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. . . Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless.