There were so many levels to the unknown, from safe to dangerous to outright nebulous, scariest of all.

How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.

The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you.

You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends.

It's not forever', she'd said, but to my mother, it might as well have been. She had make her choice, and this was it, where she felt safe, in a world she could, for the most part, control.

So you should remember that, when you're thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it's not so bad.

We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for a while. Maybe even forever. That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.