Dana Reinhardt

“I know certain truths about life.”

“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.”

“I thought he might kiss me as we sat shivering on the bank of the spring with our clothes soaked through and our feet dangling in the steaming water. We looked into each other's eyes the way I'd always imagined people did right before they leaned in closer and touched lips for the first time. But that was all we did. We looked at each other. Into each other. We were still clutching hands.”

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

“I'd watched enough TV in the lonely afternoons after school, before there was a cheese shop to go to, to know that there were boys who lied, who knew how to say just the right thing or give you just the right look. Boys who could make you feel a way you thought you didn't deserve to feel.”

“But here's something that I know about friendship: Sometimes the right thing to do is to not point out that your friend hasn't touched her chicken fingers or French fries and not point that maybe she's just overreacting. Instead, you just smile and sit with her and say, "I understand" when really, you don't understand her at all.”

“My brother, he says. My brother is dead."And again he asks me to kill him. One more time before he falls to his knees and sobs. And i get it. I do. Because i have a brother too.”

“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.”

“Sometimes things happen. Things happen even when you don't intend them to happen. Maybe at the beginning you had good intentions, or no intentions, or intentions you thought were harmless, but before you knew it things got out of control....Sometimes things take on a life of their own. You become powerless. There is nothing you can do to stop certain things from happening.”

“It was then, there in the darkness, with only those little pin-points of light to see by, light from a world away where other people with their own problems and their own secrets lived their own lives, that everything in our world changed for good.”