Teenagers are a great audience and they are fearless about asking what they want to know.

Wes wants to be with Macy. And Macy, whether she'll admit it or not, wants to be with Wes. And yet they're not together, which is not only unjust, but when you think about it, tragical!

She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.

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.

I hoped this was true. Even if it wasn‟t, all I could do was hand over what I could, with the hope of something in return. But of course, this was easier said than done.

Well, it's true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it's also true that I have loved, and been loved. And that carries a weight of its own. A greater weight, in my opinion. It's like that pie chart we talked about earlier. In the end, I'll look back on my life and see that the greatest piece of it was love. The problems, the divorces, the sadness... those will be there too, but just smaller slivers, tiny pieces.

So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.