Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons … - Gabrielle Zevin

privacy gives you creative freedom.

If your last words are somehow meant to encapsulate your entire existence, Liz finds um strangely appropriate. Um means nothing. Um is what you say while you're thinking of what you'll really say. Um suggests someone interrupted before they'd begun. Um is a fifteen-year-old girl who gets hit by a taxicab in front of a mall on the way to help pick out a prom dress for a prom she isn't even going to, for God's sake.

Speak up,' says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a moustache. 'My hearing's not so good.'
'I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.'
Liz turns to Thandi. 'I thought you said you didn't remember how you got the hole in your head.'
Thandi apologizes. 'I just remembered.'
'Shot in the head!' Florence-scratchy-voice says. 'Oy, that's rough.'
'Aw, it's nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I'm from,' Thandi says.
'WHAT?' asks Myrna with the moustache. 'Say it toward my left ear, that's the good one.'
'I SAID, "IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL,"' Thandi yells