She was so emotional, on the verge of tears. This was what I'd wanted to prevent with all those quick disappearances, the tangledness of farewells and all the baggage they brought with them. But now, looking at Deb, I realized what else I'd given up: knowing for sure that someone was going to miss me. What happened to goodbye, Michael in Westcott had written on my Ume.com page. I was pretty sure I knew, now. It had been packed away in a box of its own, trying to be forgotten, until I really needed it. Until now.

Nate: “And,” he said, “boys at twelve aren’t exactly slick with the ladies.” Ruby: “’Slick with the ladies’?” I said. “Are you twelve?

Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.

And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn't fall or fly. Instead I found myself back on the edge of the cliff, blinking, wondering if I'd ever jumped at all. It's not supposed to be like this.

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

People don't change. If anything, you get more set in your ways as you get older, not less

We didn't talk about our scars, the ones you could see and the ones you couldn't.