You Can't Make Any One Person Your

Once, She'd Been A Pro At Decompressing, Loved To Sit On The Back Deck Of The Beach House In One Of Our Splintery Adirondack Chairs For Hours At A Time, Staring At The Ocean. She Never Had A Book Or The Paper Or Anything Else To Distract Her. Just The Horizon, But It Kept Her Attention, Her Gaze Unwavering. Maybe It Was The Absence Of Thought That She Loved About Being Out There, The World Narrowing To Just The Pounding Of The Waves As The Water Moved In And Out.

It's Always Very Pure, That Last Moment Before An Ugly, Unsettling Truth Hits Someone. The Most Stark Of Before-and-afters.

Talk Was Cheap And Useless. Action Was What Mattered. And Me, I Was Moving. Now, Again, Always.

It Sounded Stupid, But Of Course Everything Does When You're Just Getting The Bare Bones Facts, Only The Basics.

Lissa Lowered Her Voice And Added, "i Might Not Even Go To School Anyway. I Might Defer And Join The Peace Corps And Go To Africa And Shave My Head And Dig Latrines." "shave Your Head?" I Said, Because, Really, This Was The Most Ludicrous Part Of The Whole Thing. "you? Do You Have Any Idea How Ugly Most People's Bare Heads Are? They've Got All Kinds Of Bumps, Lissa. And You Won't Know Until It's Too Late And You're Flat-out Bald.