“Ramona would have been proud of you.” He whispers back: “Are you?” She nods with heavy eyelids. What is she thinking there and then? Perhaps she’ll never remember it again, or perhaps she’ll always deny it, even to herself. There really ought to be a different word for “marriage,” but perhaps also a different word for “divorce.” One for when

a single minute. For most boys this infatuation obviously fades as the years pass, but for some it never does.

She’s become harder, Maya thinks. Unless she’s just grown up. Unless she’s started closing doors and windows around all her feelings, because that’s what adults do, only children can live in emotional cross-winds.

It’s silence that kills. Not being part of anything anymore.

“If you want to achieve what no one else can, you have to do what no one else wants to do.” He

Those of us who love sports don’t always love sportsmen and women. Our love for them is conditional on them being on our side, playing on our team, competing in our colors. We can admire an opponent but we never love them, not the way we love the ones who represent us, because when ours win, it feels like we win too. They become symbols of

Being married is easy, she usually thinks. You just pick an argument you’re really good at, then repeat it at least once a week for all eternity.

The defiant teenager inside his head doesn’t want to ask for help, at the same time the scared child in his chest hopes that someone will see that he needs looking after. But no one has the time.

No one tells you before you procreate that the hardest thing about being a good parent is that you never feel like one. If you’re absent you’re committing one big mistake, but if you’re present the whole time you commit a million tiny ones, and teenagers keep a count. Oh, how they keep a count.