It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.

Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

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

And I felt comfort. Finally. All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this. I knew, deep down, it was more complicated than that, but watching Jason, I was hopeful. He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I had to wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me. So I moved myself closer to him, and I'd been there ever since.

It's hard to do," I said. Wes looked at me. "What is?" I swallowed, not sure why I'd said this out loud. "Get it right.

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together.

You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was the best, it's all downhill from there.