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.

Yeah, let’s go to the hotel. Grab your purse and I’ll find your coat.

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...

I’ll never be able to give you smart answers about why we suffer, but I can come into your world and try to be some kind of help to you.

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...

This is the time and these are the people and I’d give my right arm to be a light, a comfort, to them. I know you would, too. In whatever form it takes. Use these...

I like her just fine, but you should watch yourself around her. Tennyson is given to obsession, and her obsessions tend to run toward trouble. It’s kind of a Wyoming thing to push the whole...

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

Kavanagh has a smart mouth.

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.

You were that little girl.

And we want to understand them better.

I needed out. The Jeep wasn’t fast enough. I shut it down, grabbed the keys and started running like a bear was at my heels. I couldn’t even see Henry anymore through my tears so...

My brother died because someone was jealous.

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...

I recognized Meg’s swirly handwriting and crooked my index finger into the side of the envelope to rip it open. There was no letter. Just a picture. A picture of Meg holding a picture of...

It was the first time I discovered that some girls actually sneak out of the house during slumber parties and meet up with boys. I would’ve never known if I hadn’t gone to the bathroom...

Promise?” Well, that genie’s out of the bottle and there’s no stuffing her back in.

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we’re deprived of something meaningful.

Were you not aware high school dances suck? That they always have sucked and they will continue sucking as long as the world turns?

I haven’t told you that today, Meg, because I don’t know.

Quit worrying so much about the boards and nails of your life. Focus on the stuff that lasts.” He glanced through the window toward the glowing light of the kitchen where Meg and my mom...

I’m not sure about all the particulars that led to this moment. Do I believe life is a series of dots to be connected…or that no one can outrun destiny…or that all roads lead to...

We bumped into other silent lines of kids going in the same direction. We looked like we were much younger and our lines were headed to the cafeteria or recess or the carpool line. Or...

His room was dark until he switched on his desk lamp. I sat on the floor next to his bed and watched him counting clothes and considering shoes. He seemed so boyish right then—like he...

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I’d begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were...

Just to be clear, if I, like, leaned over and whispered your name in your ear, still nothing?

It wouldn’t be real love if there weren’t the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn’t choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That’s why there’s evil in this...

All of the emotions that hit people at times like these, all of them, were coursing through us both like a secret we couldn’t tell. Because if we said everything we were thinking and feeling...

Her problem is with pretty,” Tennyson said. “She thinks I’ll need all these dresses in college. Like I would ever in a billion years pledge a sorority. I’ll pack a few of these to be...

Is that you, as big as you are, know how to walk gently on this earth.

Trusty steed.

Dear God, Meg, you’re glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That’s so adorable.” Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to...

Okay, news flash. Jealousy is not something I enjoy. I hadn’t felt it much before. But I’d also never been in love. And I’d never been 3,300 miles away from the girl I loved while...

New rules—we needed new rules. No one opens the main doors but me. No one leaves the property without me. No one goes outside without letting me know. I had these horrible images in my...

In my mind, I saw a string stretching from Henry’s heart at Quiet Waters to my heart. It was taut and it vibrated with Henry’s worries and fears and I felt them all.Deeply. I felt...

I finally understood why so much monkey business happened in the backs of buses. Put us in close proximity, with wheels spinning under us, and nothing to do but wait, we’re going to start thinking...

It’s the only part of a person I really want to capture. Everything else seems to get lost in layers of deception or defensiveness. But not kindness. You can’t hide it. And people either are...

On the best nights, he’d appear outside the bookstore window and wait for me to unlock the door. He usually hadn’t had time to shower between doing things with cattle and horses and coming to...

I hope we gave them that sense of belonging because I know there’ll be times in their lives when grasping at those bonds could mean the difference between making it and not.

For a second, I stared at the map of her veins just under the surface of her thin skin. It was like her body was trying to become diaphanous. Instead of getting harder and stronger...

I couldn’t stop crying because it was so intimate, in that way I always thought being physical with him would feel. If someone had walked in they might have thought Henry was barely touching me....

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

I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night....

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...

He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given...

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls...

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...

I get that. For you, it’s more than following a bunch of rules—no sex, no booze, no swear words, pray every night and twice on Sunday.

It’s yours.