Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

But it was okay not to fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere.

You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.

So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

He doesn’t love me. He might still love me as I was at fifteen, when I didn’t know any better. When I trusted everyone. I’m not that person any more. He’s just a boy. He was the first to really hurt me, but he’s just a boy. There were a lot of them.

Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.

So you should remember that, when you're thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it's not so bad.