It was just perfect, just right all at once.

From up above, in a plane passing over, you’d just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while.

…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?

Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.

Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren't real, or if I was.

But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening.

I was running from one problem or place to another, with no time left to study, or sleep, or just breathe. I felt pulled in all directions, fighting to keep all these obligations circling in the air above me. It was only a matter of time before something fell.