It’s too weird to think about – how death seems to rewrite all the rules. People who never talked to each other can suddenly cry together. People who used to be close can hardly bear to be in the same room.

That was progress, right there. Except no one would ever know how hard I was working to keep my temper under control, because the whole point of keeping your temper under control is not doing things like throwing a milk carton in someone’s face even though they clearly deserve it.

Our midnight feasts aren’t so much ‘lashings of ginger beer’ as ‘whatever booze we can smuggle in’.

Mothers can be so dense. Just act like you approve of what we’re doing. We’ll soon do the exact opposite, just to spite you.

It’s entirely possible to get to know someone without actually seeing them in person. In fact, it’s better like that because none of the superficial stuff gets in the way. You really get to know a person. And it’s easier to express yourself when you’re writing things down. At least it is for me. I like to order my thoughts, and delete them if they don’t make any sense. You can’t do that in real life.

I lean into him and tuck my head into that space between his head and his shoulder – the space that I always thought was custom-made just for me.

And he could never understand that I could never feel OK again as long as I knew she was hurting.

I didn’t just wake up one morning and think, “I’m a boy!” It sort of crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder a few times before I started to pay attention I began to think that the word “girl” didn’t quite fit me. It was like a shoe that was too small – it pinched me.

I wish she knew that there are other options besides “complete and utter breakdown” and “plastic smile, everything’s fine.” There’s a middle ground, waiting to be found.

You feel like tiptoeing on the morning after a big argument. You’re not quite sure if you’re going to launch right back into where you left off in the argument, or whether a few hours of sleep will have miraculously solved everything.