It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

It took a lot of work to be perfect. If you didn’t want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.

Because' I repeated, as a breeze blew over us, "sometimes things just happen. That aren't expected. Or on the list." "Such as?" he asked "I don't know," I said, frustrated. "That's the point. It would be out of the blue, taking us by surprise. Something we might not be prepared for." "But we will be prepared," he said, confused. "We'll have the list.

I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I’d think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend’s lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass’s was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.

There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.

I feel like Twitter was tailor-made for me, because I can do short spurts all day long. I loved my blog, but doing daily, then thrice weekly entries was really time consuming. 140 characters is perfect.

Change is inevitable, though," he replied. "As is disappointment. Best to get used to it now.