But what I have come to understand as I watch the lonely flicker of my candle and listen for the faintest echo of Mother’s voice is this: sometimes we breathe because we have to, not because we want to.

She’s a different person now. So is he, of course. But her memory is intact. She’s living her life in the future, in a Germany that’s finally free after so many years of her fighting. My father, on the other hand, is living his life in a muddled past.

But I am thinking about the way Ezra yelled at Joshua, not so dissimilar to the way my mother and sister used to yell at each other. You have to love someone to yell at them so intensely; you have to care so unbelievably much that your anger explodes and burns across the sky like the Soviet’s Sputnik I’ve read so much about. My sister always thought they fought because Mother hated her, but I knew better.

Whereas it was so hard for people to break, but we could get sick or die in what seemed like a matter of seconds.

There isn’t just one ending, one answer, one person who can make us happy, or not. Maybe we can all begin again, become different people.

Shelby’s laugh is like water. Sometimes it’s good, cleansing, even refreshing. Other times, I feel it might drown me.

I am not lost, but I am without direction, and even though they sound the same, they are not.

You have to love someone to yell at them so intensely; you have to care so unbelievably much that your anger explodes and burns across the sky like the Soviet’s Sputnik.

My father always seems to think greatness and money are the same thing, but you know what I think greatness is?""What?" I ask."Being brave, like Miss Korzynski. Doing something that no one else has dared to do before you. Finding something that terrifies you and then doing it anyway.

My lying is a second skin by now, so easy to forget it's there, so I don't always remember that lying is actually an art, and those who aren't meticulous about it are easily exposed.