Obviously, Josh and Mel, like all old friends, have history, and history is rife with skirmishes and peace treaties and political coups. But I should have done more to get us to, I don’t know, a ceasefire or something. “Lay down your arms, don’t you know it’s Halloween!

Pain flirts with the shape of her face, her eyes growing glassy and pink even though she’s the one ending things. She doesn’t do well with hurting people. She’s a vegetarian.And this is an emotional slaughterhouse.

I never imagined how different first kisses could be until I had two in twenty-four hours.

The sign at the front of the lot seems to promise to REDEFINE, REVIVE, and RECAPTURE the magic of the Castle. The city wants to rebuild it as some sort of condo with a historical facade or something. It won’t be for us, the young, aimless, or homeless. But it will rise again in full glory, given a second chance at life.Maybe we deserve that, too.

Kids who, I hope, have a couple years left before they have to think about what they’ll be like at seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, expected by parents and teachers and politicians and everyone else to have everything figured out—but on the authority figure of the day’s terms, not their own. If these kids are trans, queer, or people of colour, how many of their nights are already spent curled up and defeated on the couch?