If this were a game, he could hit pause. He could restart, say different things, the right ones this time. He could search his inventory for the item… - Gabrielle Zevin

She sleeps; she sleeps.
And when she sleeps, she dreams.
And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.

The rub of the Choose Your Own Adventure stories is that if you don't make a few bad choices, the story will be terribly boring. If you do everything right and you're always good, the story will be very short.

Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.