“He didn’t feel any pain. He died instantly.” That was how she told me that my father was dead. I was 14.

“I hated my body and punished it, and it hated me and punished me back. Is that what happened? That’s the thing about getting sick the way I got sick: nailing it down.”

“Isn’t this what Valentine’s Day had always been to me? A pageant? An opportunity to try on the idea of being in love, being traditional, being a couple you could fit into a envelope.”

“I feel like yelling at people,” she told me. I didn’t really grasp then that she meant that. This was the very first time. This was the day after Easter.