Sarah Dessen

To me she said, 'It's this stupid gotcha thing, they've been doing it for weeks now. Leaping out at each other and us, scaring the hell out of everyone.'It's a game of wits,' Bert said to me.'Half-wits,' Kristy added.

That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.

Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.

Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.

I would have thought this would make me feel better.. Getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.

Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.

The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, 'is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.