I see us milling around our lockers in Tri-County High, laughing and joking and making plans for the weekend, whispering about girls and sex and other undiscovered territories, slapping five, talking cool, dreaming our pretty little high school dreams.

Everything I ever lost, I gained back with you.

The part of you that you repress will eat at you until it destroys you. You’ve always known that, and yet you continue to think everything will be fine. You try to convince yourself that you can fit into a world where you know you shouldn’t exist.

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I were just normal. No gifts, no talents, no curses.

When the road gets rough, grab a skateboard.

Bobby's back yard hadn't changed since she was knee-high. It was still littered with bicycle bits and pieces of engine that he was always tinkering with. It looked like the same relentless weeds bravely struggled through the cracked flagstones; the same array of socks and T-shirts flapped on the washing line, though somewhat bigger, and even the same wasps droned around the dustbin. That's how it seemed – a place immune to time.

She licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers, sun-heavy and happy, the type of happiness that before might have felt ordinary, but now seemed fragile, like if she stood too quickly, it might slide off her shoulders and break.

She'd already learned that pretty exposes you and pretty hides you and like most girls, she hadn't yet learned how to navigate the difference.

The memories were strange clingy things like burrs knotted in his hair. He could choose to let them be, he only felt them when he pulled them, and he could pretend they weren't there like positioning his head on a pillow so as not to notice the lumps against his scalp. But amidst the commotion of the parade—a strange cocoon—he recalled things sharply. He had a part in Dam leaving the palace, and ever since that point, his best friend was headed down a dangerous path.

True love is what makes life worth living.