So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.

But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren't what people wanted to hear.

That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened - good, bad, or anywhere in between - it was always, if nothing else, all your own.

Looking at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredivle thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all.

As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship.

Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.

It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn't just lose a person, but their entire world as well.