Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.

Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete-like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.

Fine...a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.

I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn't always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be risker, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

but you could also look at it the other way. Like you’re saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.

I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.

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