Nate: “And,” he said, “boys at twelve aren’t exactly slick with the ladies.” Ruby: “’Slick with the ladies’?” I said. “Are you twelve?

But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?

It was as familiar to me as a song I'd been hearing my whole life, covered by various people but the basic tune the same.

An empty frame, in which the picture is always changing, makes a statement about how time is always passing. It doesn't really stop, even in a single image. I t just feels that way.

Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school.

I looked down again at the sign in my hand - ENJOY THE RIDE! - and it seemed, suddenly, to be just that. A sign.

In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.