I'm sorry," I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn't eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.

And like my dad always said, the first step is always the hardest.

But it was important to simply be sought, even if you didn‟t ever want to be found.

But all the love in the world won't save a sinking ship. You have to either bail or jump overboard.

How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.

One word," Ted replied, dead serious, "can change the whole world." There was a moment while we all considered this. Finally Lissa said to Chloe, loud enough for all of us to hear (she'd had a minibottle or two herself), "I bet he did really well on his SATs.