That dot covers all the places we've ever been. You could cut that piece of land out of the ground and sing it into this ocean and no one would even notice. I feel that fear again, the fear of my own size. 'Right. So?' 'So? So everything I've ever worried about or said or done, how can it possibly matter?' He shakes his head. 'It doesn't.' 'Of course it does,' I say, 'All that land is filled with people, every one of them different, and the things they do to each other matter.

Sarcasm is always at someone's expense.

That's why you like me!' I exclaim. 'Because you're not nice either! It makes so much more sense now.' 'Come on,' he says. 'We're going to see Johanna.' 'I like you, too.' 'That's encouraging,' he replies flatly. 'Come on. Oh for God's sake. I'll just carry you.

This is what I wanted most to avoid: for my rises and falls to become Tobias's rises and falls. That's why I can't let him step in to defend me now.

I was so afraid that we would just keep colliding over and over again if we stayed together, and that eventually the impact would break me. But now I know I am like the blade and he is like the whetstone- I am too strong to break so easily, and I become better, sharper, every time I touch him.

I look older. Maybe it's the short hair or maybe it's just that I wear all that has happened like a mask. Either way, I always thought I would be happy when I stopped looking like a child. But all I feel is a lump in my throat. I am no longer the daughter my parents knew. They will never know me as I am now.

I have done bad things. I can't take them back, and they are part of who I am. Most of the time, they seem like the only thing I am.