Now, see," Wes said, nodding at my plate, "this is going to blow your mind." I looked at him. "It's a waffle, not the second coming.

Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour, could make all the difference. So much hanging on just these things, tiny increments that together build a life. Like words build a story, and what had Ted said? One word can change the entire world.

This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on.

Lissa lowered her voice and added, "I might not even go to school anyway. I might defer and join the Peace Corps and go to Africa and shave my head and dig latrines." "Shave your head?" I said, because, really, this was the most ludicrous part of the whole thing. "You? Do you have any idea how ugly most people's bare heads are? They've got all kinds of bumps, Lissa. And you won't know until it's too late and you're flat-out bald.

Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school.

That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.

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