I know you guys have some sort of weird thing going on, with that game you play and everything—" "It's called a friendship.

Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and get it over with.

It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn't just lose a person, but their entire world as well.

"You ready to play?" Dave asked, bouncing it. "I don't know," I said. "Are you going to cheat?" "It's street ball!" He said checking it to me. "Show me that love." So chessy, i thought. But as i felt it, solid against my hands, i did feel something. I wasn't sure it was love. Maybe what remained of it, though, whatever that might be. "All right," I said. "Let's play."

You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.

I was actually pretty miserable in high school. I couldn't wait for it to be over. And when it finally was, I remember sitting at graduation with all these classmates getting nostalgic and emotional already and all I could think was, "Get me out of here. I never want to see you people again." So it's ironic that I spend half my day putting myself back there by choice [while writing].

It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.