The eyes-the thousands of wandering, questioning, reproving eyes-they are all around us. They penetrate my clothes. They rip at my skin. They dour me.

We can only fix our own life. We cannot play the role of Gods in someone else’s.

Telling people what they want to hear is not the same thing as winning.

The English language has over one million words in it, and none of them are good enough for Lottie. None of them will capture what I saw when I looked at her. What I see now when I remember her. How she will forever look through my filtered view of the world.

Tomorrow I will be whole again. I will be strong. I will be me. If only I knew who that was.

Have you ever noticed how many worlds there are out there? Infinite. An infinite number of worlds. And they all function separately from each other. Like unrelated specks of dirt floating in the air. Sometimes two specks will collide, momentarily affecting each other, but most of the time they just keep on floating, completely unaware that any other specks exist.

I kiss him so hard, it’s as though I’m trying to extract the very life out of him and unite it with mine.

The truth is, we are never just one thing. We all have many titles and many labels, but far too often, we get trapped inside a single definition. The Teacher’s Pet, the Rule Follower, the Cheerleader, the Athlete, the Princess, the Basket Case, the Criminal... the Rock Star’s Girlfriend. Whether we wrote that definition or it was given to us, it somehow becomes our only identity. We get so lost in it that we forget about all the other pieces that make up who we are.

I’m sugar and spice and all things nice. And look how well that’s turned out for me so far.

Thirteen is hard. You don’t know who you are yet. Who your real friends are. Who you can trust. You don’t yet know what you are capable of.