There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

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

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.

Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.

Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.

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.

Clearly, sharing something could take you a long way, or at least to a different place than you'd planned. Like a friendship or a family, or even jsut alone on a curb on a Saturday, trying to get your bearings as best you can.