I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.

In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.

You can never be sure of anyone until you're close enough to see them clearly.

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.

I took his wildness from him and tried to fold it into myself, filling up the empty spaces all those second place finishes left behind.