Teenagers Are A Great Audience

"i Just Don't Know," I Said, My Voice Sounding Bumby, Not Like Mine, "how Do You Help Someone Who Doesn't Want Your Help. What Do You Do When You Can't Do Anything?"

I Am Never Happy When I Finish A Book. I Always Start Feeling Good, And Then I Get To About Page 75 And Start Losing Momentum - And I Kind Of Pull It Together At The End, But By Then I Think It's Just All Over. It's Become Almost A Running Joke Among My Agent And My Editor - I Always Say That, So They Don't Take Me Seriously Anymore.

"look," I Said, "we Knew Jason And Becky Would Be Back, The Break Would End. This Isn't A Surprise, It's What's Supposed To Happen. It's What We Wanted. Right?" "is It?" He Asked. "is It What You Want?" Whether He Intended It To Be Or Not, This Was The Final Question, The Last Truth. If I Said What I Really Thought, I Was Opening Myself Up For A Hurt Bigger Than I Could Even Imagine. I Didn't Have It In Me. We Changed And Altered So Many Rules, But It Was This One, The Only One When We'd Started, That I Would Break. "yes," I Said.

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

This Was Our Common Ground, The Secret We Shared But Never Spoke Aloud.