Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.

So what do you wear to dump somebody?" she asked me, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. "Black, for mourning? Or something cheerful and colorful, to distract them from their pain? Or maybe you wear some sort of camouflage, something that will help you disappear quickly in case they don't take it well.

Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.

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.

Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.

It's never long distance between friends.

There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.