Gayle Forman

Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.

I don't hate you. I don't think I ever really did. It was just anger. And once I faced it head-on, once understood it, it dissipated. -Mia

Allyson meanwhile is remembering. Why this person? All the things she has told herself, or other people have told her - infatuation or Paris or good acting or lust - no longer hold water, because she remembers so viscerally and feels it anew. It's not any of that. It's not even him. Or all him. It's her. The way she can be with him.

It takes a certain kind of naiveté, or perhaps just stupidity, to know how things will end and still hope otherwise.

Pete and Repeat went out in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was saved?

Next time I get sick, you can tell that to me. You can be my girl in the mountains.""Okay", I say."I'll be your mountain girl and take care of you.

For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.

But Dad looked delighted. "My Mia's singing 'Waiting for Vengeance' to my Teddy. What do you think about that?

When we got back home, Gramps dropped me off and enveloped me in a hug. Normally, he was a handshaker, maybe a back-patter on really special occasions. His hug was strong and tight, and I knew it was his way of telling me that he'd had a wonderful time.__e, too, Gramps,_ I whispered.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with just ten digits.

A journey of 1,000 miles starts with just 10 digits.

But then Mason touches my neck, to the spot on it where the cut from that night has since healed, and I pull away.He was right, after all; it didn't leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I'd have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you're the only one who can see them.

And just in general, I'm better. Better than I've been since Bram died, and in some ways better than I was even before that. No, Lulu didn't break my hear. But I'm beginning to wonder if in some roundabout way, she fixed it.

If you could know going in that twenty-five years of love would break you in the end, would you risk it? Because isn__ it inevitable? When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you__l have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium.

We stand there for a moment, staring at each other, savoring it. And then all at once, we slam together. Mia's legs are off the ground, wrapped around my waist, her hands dipping in my hair, my hands tangled in hers. And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging.

I'll keep you here.' He taps his temple. 'Where you can't get lost.

I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.

I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming damply against her bare shoulders, which are still milky white and covered with the constellation of freckles that I used to kiss. The scar on her left shoulder, the one that used to be an angry red weld is silvery pink now. Almost like the latest rage in tattoo accessories. Almost pretty.