Stephanie Perkins

I laugh, and it sounds like I've been sucking helium.

We're enveloped in pitch black. "Wait here," I whisper."Are you getting your ax?""Handcuffs.""Kinky. But, okay, I'll try it.

I just can't fathom why anyone would stand on a ledge when there's a respectable amount of walking space right next to it.

Confidence, darling." He leans across the table and touches a finger to my cheek. "You could learn something from me, you know.

I look at you, and I think about you, and ... I don't know. No one has ever confounded me the way you do.

He__ so close, yet so far away._ _ Anna

I doubted myself, and that made me doubt you. But you weren__ the problem. You were never the problem. I should have trusted you, but I didn__, because I couldn__ trust myself.

They blinked in the dusk of the setting sun, a reminder that light was a recurring state.

Cricket Bell._ I smiled into my phone. __ow did you get so wise?

That__ the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don__ want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It__ mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.

Because that's the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don't want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It's mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.

I don't know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic.

I__ beginning to think that maybe it__ okay to be a blank canvas. Maybe it__ okay that my future is unknown. And maybe,_ I say with another smile, __t__ okay to be inspired by the people who do know their future.

And then there's the other thing.The thing I'm trying to ignore. The thing I shouldn't want, the thing I can't have.And he's standing in front of me right now.So what do I wish for? Something I'm not sure I want? Someone I'm not sure I need? Or someone I know I can't have?Screw it. Let the fates d

It gets worse. Josh tell her that he loves her. She says it back. He touches her. She touches him back. And then they're losing their virginity on the floor of her bedroom beside her pet rabbit, Isis. A rabbit.Josh literally lost his virginity in front of a metaphor for sex.

I have a rule.""Elaborate."The statue is still warm from the previous visitors. "I ask myself, if the worst happened__f I did get knocked up-would I be embarrassed to tell my child who his father was? If the answer is anywhere even remotely close to yes, then there's no way."He nods slowly. "That's a good rule.

We can__ stop smiling at each other. I can__ believe that adults get to do this every day. And I don__ even mean sex, though it__ wonderful, but things like this. Brushing our teeth at the same sink. Do adults realize how lucky they are? Or do they forget that these small moments are actually small miracles? I don__ want to ever forget.

A blank canvas...has unlimited possibilities.