This thought was interrupted, suddenly, by a crash from the front entrance. We all looked over just in time to see Adam bending back from the glass, rubbing his arm. "Pull open," Maggie called out. As Leah rolled her eyes, she said, "He never remembers. It's so weird.

Morris was not the type to offer a hug or even hold your hand. But there was something in his quiet indignation at the universe then--and Luke, now--that was just the kind of comfort I needed. "I'm such a mess," I said. "We're almost off the island and I didn't even ask you where you were going." He shrugged. "No place. Wherever you are.

I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.

Maybe that's what you got when you stood over your grief, facing it finally. A sense of its depths, its area, the distance across, and the way over or around it, whichever you chose in the end.

Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.

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

You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.