He Was Still In Love With You,

That’s Just The Kind Of Thing That Kids Do To Each Other. It’s No Big Deal. There’s Always Going To Be A Person Laughing And Somebody Getting Laughed At. It Happens Every Day, In Every School, In Every Town In America—probably In The World, For All I Know. The Whole Point Of Growing Up Is Learning To Stay On The Laughing Side.

The House, The Pond, The Tree-it Was All Both Overwhelmingly Familiar And Different From What She Remembered-smaller And Shabbier, Somehow. It Was Like Waking Up To Find That Your Reflection In The Mirror Had Aged Overnight, Or Had Sprouted A New Mole: You Were Forced To Admit That Things Changed, Whether You Gave Them Permission To Or Not.

This Is What We Are Made For: Promises, Pledges, And Sworn Oaths Of Obedience.

We're Killers, All Of Us: We Kill Our Lives, Our Past Selves, The Things That Mattered. We Bury Them Under Slogans And Excuses.

And There It Is: Even Though We’re Standing In The Same Patch Of Sun-drenched Pavement, We Might As Well Be A Hundred Thousand Miles Apart.