I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I'd ever known.

You just looked..." she said, searching for the word, "taken, you know? Plus you hardly reacted to Wes. I mean, you did alittle, but nothing like most girls. It was a little swoon. Not a sa-woon, you know?" I said, "Sa-woon? Oh, come on," she said shaking her head. "Even a blind girl could tell he is amazing.

This is exactly what i wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.

I was heading off to my new world. But I was taking a part of my past, and the future, along with me for the ride.

Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come. Fate doesn't punch a time clock or consult a schedule.

I'm sorry," I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn't eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.

When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.