It's easier to remember your lies if they're close to the truth.

The TV said you should ignore bullies and they would stop harassing you. In practice this worked about half the time. The other half, you ended up with two tall boys shadowing you through a trailer park, their fingers taking little nips at your clothes, like dogs.

It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we'd be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That's where people got into trouble.

How did we get to this place where we had to be tough all the time and never said how much we loved each other?

That is the way convince people. Or change them and prevent them from hurting whether themselves and others. Art is the most effective form of communication. You can use it to lift the human spirit and make them understand that there is more to life than their next drug use.

But you are right, being stupid is not illegal. Otherwise half this town would be behind bars.

When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.

No. I just don't want to be a detective. They figure out what happened after the fact, when it's too late. I want to prevent it from happening.

Or that I couldn't stand to watch anything bad happen to you, because it was like it was happening to me too. Is that love?

My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such assholes.