How to Build a House

They're just words. And words alone don't really mean anything. It's what you feel and what you believe when you say them that matter.

I have a theory that as long as you have one good friend, one real friend, you can get through anything.

Some things you can fix, and some things you can’t. And I just think it is a shame to walk away from the things you can.

But no matter what happens, the earth keeps turning. Monday always comes and eventually, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, that Monday is followed by a Friday. You take tests, hand in papers you wrote at two in the morning the day they were due, and your shoes get worn out, and the pollen in the air increases so that you go through an entire package of tissues during the SATs, and you wander through the crowds at parties looking for Natalie Banks because you came with her, and you watch her take off for the backyard with a senior who seems to be in the backyard with a different girl at every party, and you learn to play chess with your dad, and you eat too much ice cream, and your favorite television drama has its two-hour season finale, and then suddenly the school year ends and you pack your bags for Tennessee.

I think about how we can’t always live in the moment because moments pass, and when we’re lucky, we have the kind of moments that we can’t help wanting to go back to. We think about them, remember how they felt, and when more time passes we tell stories of these moments that are worth reliving.

Guys don’t go for me. Period. I don’t distract them. They don’t sneak glances in my direction. They don’t think of me when I’m not standing right in front of them. I’m scenery. I’m background.

I totally bought you as a girl," says Marisol. "I'll double check with Frances later, but by the sounds of things, you seem to have no balls.

The Little Drummer Boy" was playing in the background for what seemed like the third time in a row. I fought off an urge to beat that Little Drummer Boy seneless with his own drumsticks.

Harper, I..." You don't have to say it." I don't?" I know." You know what?" I lean against him, nestling in the crook of his arm. I talk into his neck. I don't need to be able to see to find the parts of him I know. That morning in the trailer, when we had it to ourselves, and you made me breakfast, I wondered whether you would tell me you loved me, if you'd ever tell me, and I looked at you, and I thought you were going to say it, but instead you went off on a tangent about boysenberry jam." And?" And it was funny. And it was close enough to the real thing for me. Just sitting there with you like that." Boysenberry jam?" Boysenberry jam." Harper," he whispers into my hair. Yeah?" I boysenberry jam you.

Everyday is filled with opportunities to take a quiet moment

Precision about language can be really, really annoying. It can make you miss the point of what the other person is saying altogether.

One day things can be going along like they always were and then, suddenly, in a simple rotation of an overheated planet, everything can change.

The roof was torn off the gym. God's way of telling the jocks that they'd better remember who's really charge.

Linus closes his eyes and puts his arms out at his sides. "Look to this day. For it is life. The very life of life." I stand beside him. Quiet. He continues. "It its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The splendor of beauty, the bliss of growth, the glory of action. Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope." He opens his eyes and looks at me. "It's an ancient Sufi text." He smiles. "My mantra." He folds his paper, bats me over the head with it and walks away.

I'm curious how someone...finds God, or solace, or peace or whatever it is he finds out here alone...while he's reciting words. Is it just a matter of believing what you say?

But I do remember this thing that this famous rabbi wrote once about how Christians build cathedrals, these gorgeous impressive structures, but Jews, with a long history of watching their buildings get destroyed, build their cathedrals in time. The High Holidays. Shabbat. Cathedrals carved out of time that can never be worn down. I know you're no Jew but I kind of think that's what you did with your summer down here.

But then I think about where knowing somebody has gotten me: nowhere. No. someplace worse than nowhere, because when you’re nowhere I’m pretty sure you feel nothing.