Side Effects May Vary

. I wish I had better, smarter words, but all I wanted was to throw a rock through the window and scream

But I wondered sometimes, the way your mind asks those big questions, like whether or not there’s a god or how a girl can think she’s ugly one day and pretty the next.

knew how to die. It was the living that scared me.

she kept saying my name like that, I might not mind it so much.

it all slipped into place for me and she became my everything and my everyone. My music, my sun, my words, my hope, my logic, my confusion, my flaw.
I was thirteen years old, and she was all these things to me.

We’re at the peak of the mountain, folks, but let’s not relax yet. Thankful, but mindful. That’s going to be our mantra these next few months.”

If I stared at her long enough, the piano keys would play themselves, fueled by her. En pointe she was a force, a tornado: safe to look at from a distance, but in close proximity, you risked being just another piece of her debris.

Alice, don’t leave, okay? I’ll come here every day, just don’t leave

The only thing worse than losing was almost winning.

but Bernie told Mom that people don’t like to do business with a place whose name they can’t pronounce.