Friendship," Marx said, "is kind of like having a Tamagotchi. - Gabrielle Zevin

Your mother is in the bedside chair. She is wearing a dress printed with strawberries and birds. Using a long needle, she is stringing brightly colored origami cranes into garlands. You know what she's doing: It's a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them. This is marriage.

How do I go on when the person I love most in the world is in love with someone else? Someone tell me the solution, he thought, so I don't have to play this losing game all the way through.

Los Angeles, especially when taken from a distance, was not a beautiful city, but she could will herself to be beautiful, if only for two weeks. Beauty, after all, is almost always a matter of angles and resolve.