I shift from one foot to the other, trying to get a good look at him. When I finally do, I look away. His eyes were already on me, probably drawn by my nervous movement.

He moves his thumb in a slow circle over the back of my hand. It is meant to comfort me, but it frustrates me instead. I need to talk to him. I need to look at him.

Suicide to them is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

Morning," I say. "Shh," she says. "If you don't acknowledge it, maybe it will go away.

If Eric thinks I did something right, I must have done it wrong.

When i get home, I sit on the front step and take deep breaths of the cool spring air for a few minutes. My mother was the one who taught me to steal moments like those, moments of freedom, though she didn't now it. I watched her... But I learned something else from watching her too, which is that the free moments always have to end.