If this was my forever, I wouldn't want to spend it here.

You didn't have to take a punch for me, you know,' he said. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter.' 'You're a freak is what you are,' I said.

It's only advice. Ignore it if you want.

But even more so, it reminded me that this was all really happening. Stanford. The end of the summer. The beginning of my real life. It was no longer just creeping up, peeking over the horizon, but instead lingering in plain sight.

You just walk over there and into the office and say, 'Hey, be my prom date,'" he said. "It's that simple.

I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I'm not proud of. I wasn't a good student and I wasn't particularly a good daughter. I wasn't very engaged.

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place. But standing there alone on the landing, I thought of Grandma Halley and how she'd held me close against her lap as we watched the sky together. I'd always thought I couldn't remember, but suddenly in that moment, I closed my eyes and saw the comet, finally, brilliant and impossible, stretching above me across the sky.