You get use to someone—start to like them, even—and they leave. In the end, everyone leaves.

And just when I though things were starting to get better, everything had gone wrong again.

People just don't seem to get me. Don't understand that I need my space. Always telling me what to do. They think rules and routines and clean hands and your p's and q's will make everything all right. They haven't got a clue.

We all know we're one day closer to the end when we wake up in the morning. We just kid ourselves that it's not happening.

However cozy things seemed, the facts of life were the same. You couldn't escape death: It would get us all in the end.

I was tired of being me.

My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards—we’re so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap.

He loved me and I loved him, but the number in my head was telling me that he was going to die today. And the numbers had never been wrong.

How easy to be a bird or an animal, living from day to day, unaware you're alive, unaware that one day you will die.

It's okay to talk about it. Death is so normal, I don't know why everyone gets so hung up about it. We all have to deal with it. Most people that you talk to have lost someone, but nobody talks about it.

And then, a strangely comforting thought trickled through me—I had nothing, so I could do anything now. Anything I wanted. I had nothing left to lose.

Part of me wanted this more than anything else in the world—to have someone to hang out with, be like everyone else for a while. The rest of me screamed to get the hell out of there, not to get sucked in.

Life's not that simple. Not so easy to move on when the anger you've got is what keeps you going.

I don't understand, Jem. I don't understand why you'd leave me. Why would you that?

I can't stand men crying. It's wrong, isn't it? Their faces aren't made for it, they kind of crumple; it's painful to watch.