I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart. - Gabrielle Zevin

She unlocked the door, and they walked through to the small backyard. It was fall, and two of their three fruit trees were in season: a Fuyu persimmon tree and a guava tree. "Sadie, do you see this? This is a persimmon tree! This is my favorite fruit." Marx picked a fat orange persimmon from the tree, and he sat down on the now termite-free wooden deck, and he ate it, juice running down his chin. "Can you believe our luck?" Marx said. "We bought a house with a tree that has my actual favorite fruit." Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met — he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn't truly understood the nature of Marx's good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know — were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before. My God, she thought, he is so easy to love. "Shouldn't you wash that?" Sadie asked. "It's our tree. Nothing's touched it except my grimy hand," Marx said. "What about the birds?" "I don't fear the birds, Sadie. But you should have one of these." Marx stood, and he picked another fruit for himself and one for her. He walked over to the hose at the side of the house, and he rinsed the persimmon. He held out the fruit to her. "Eat up, my love. Fuyus only yield every other year." Sadie took a bite of the fruit. It was mildly sweet, its flesh somewhere between a peach and a cantaloupe. Maybe it was her favorite fruit, too?

You know this girl.
Her hair is neither long nor short nor light nor dark. She parts it precisely in the middle.
She sits precisely in the middle of the classroom, and when she used to ride the school bus, she sat precisely in the middle of that, too.
She joins clubs, but is never the president of them. Sometimes she is the secretary; usually, just a member. When asked, she has been known to paints sets for the school play.
She always has a date to the dance, but is never anyone's first choice. In point of fact, she's nobody's first choice for anything. Her best friend became her best friend when another girl moved away.
She has a group of girls she eats lunch with every day, but God, how they bore her. Sometimes, when she can't stand it anymore, she eats in the library instead. Truth be told, she prefers books to people, and the librarian always seems happy to see her.
She knows there are other people who have it worse — she isn't poor or ugly or friendless or teased. Of course, she's also aware that the reason no one teases is because no one ever notices her.
This isn't to say she doesn't have qualities.
She is pretty, maybe, if anyone would bother to look. And she gets good enough grades. And she doesn't drink and drive. And she says NO to drugs. And she is always where she says she will be. And she calls when she's going to be late. And she feels a little, just a little, dead inside.
She thinks, You think you know me, but you don't.
She thinks, None of you has any idea about all the things in my heart.
She thinks, None of you has any idea how really and truly beautiful I am.
She thinks, See me. See me. See me.
Sometimes she thinks she will scream.
Sometimes she imagines sticking her head in an oven.
But she doesn't.
She just writes it all down in her journal and waits.
She is waiting for someone to see.

What you have with Sadie is nothing like what I have with Sadie, so it doesn't even matter. You can fuck anyone," he says. "You can't make games with anyone, though."
"I make games with both of you," you point out. "I named Ichigo, for God's sake. I have been with both of you every step of the way. You can't say I haven't been here."
"You've been here, sure. But you're fundamentally unimportant. If you weren't here, it would be someone else. You're a tamer of horses. You're an NPC, Marx."
An NPC is a character that is not playable by a gamer. It is an AI extra that gives a programmed world verisimilitude. The NPC can be a best friend, a talking computer, a child, a parent, a lover, a robot, a gruff platoon leader, or the villain. Sam, however, means this as an insult — -in addition to calling you unimportant, he's saying you're boring and predictable. But the fact is, there is no game without the NPCs.
"There's no game without the NPCs," you tell him. "There's just some bullshit hero, wandering around with no one to talk to and nothing to do.