But I understood, now, that we don’t live only for ourselves. We’re connected by millions of shared experiences and dreams and nightmares, all tied together with compassion. I learned that even when we’re going through...

Things are crazy here, and I’m questioning everything.

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.

I reached down and picked up a baseball bat at my feet and I flung it as hard as it could. It circled and arced high in the air until it slammed against the side...

I’m here. Start at the beginning.

Look at this one.” I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent,...

The first thing I needed, possibly the only thing, was to kiss her and I did, for as long as I could. I let us both breathe for a minute, and I perched her on...

Every moment of our lives we make choices. Most we don’t even know we’re making, they’re so dull or routine or automatic. Some are beyond explanation—like my mom choosing Wyatt’s memory over Dad and me.

It’s yours.

He’s hurting and it’s not just the Quinn thing. It’s being away from you and wondering if you’re hurting, too. Or if you’re having too much fun to hurt. What he really needed was to...

It was about how men walk into a forest afraid because they know all the things that can happen. They might wake the noisy birds and cause chaos. But kids come into the trees and...

I smiled at him. Not even Wyatt would have known how to be this honorable when talking about a girl that had hurt him.

There I’m only myself,” she’d said. Standing in the middle of masterpieces that only Jo had ever seen and touched, I knew what she meant.

You okay?

Most kids grow sullen and angry when they’re working through issues, but Thanet mustered up another kind of bull-headed strength. The kind that sees beyond circumstances to what really matters. How could anyone hurt a...

She didn’t see me because of the reflection on the store windows, and she wouldn’t know me in this car anyway. In fact, she probably wouldn’t know me with shaggy hair and the beginnings of...

Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn’t...

No. No, you can’t.

Hmmm. What you’re saying is that you’ve never been kissed?” He picked at a string on the blanket under us.

When I’m naked, I can see my heart beating.

Oh, hey, did you want to keep these for when your invisible boyfriend returns from his fake vacation?

Hearing my brother’s words coming out of Henry, this stranger in a strange town, made me feel wild with all the loss—wild and wired with no place to put those feelings.

He comes in through people. People who love us anyway. They jump right into the chaos with us and try to help us make sense of it. That’s what mercy is…it’s choosing to help, or...

And we want to understand them better.

It could be why you’re still single.

Leave my dad out of this.

With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can’t explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here...

Go to the Winter Dance with me.

The ice cold fear I’d felt, not knowing if Wyatt was alive, pressed into the wall with other girls and surrounded by guys who were unspeakably brave, hit my body again in a wave. This...

I found I could only glance at him for tiny moments and then I had to look away. He was perfect enough to hurt my feelings for a long time, and I wanted to let...