Adam Rapp

Love,JamieP.S. I can't believe you're dying. Please don't die.

And then again, maybe it was some weird noise in my brother__ head, some little digital murmur he never told anyone about. I__e heard about that _ how you wake up one day and there__ like this permanent dial tone droning somewhere behind the meat in your head, a little Dustbuster trapped where the brain saves you from going crazy. After a while you wind up ending it all just to make things quiet again.

No one answered. You could hear the light buzzing over us. I love that sound. It means school isn't working, that the teachers are losing the battle.

For some reason, I kept trying to see how much pubic hair he had. It was all matted and kind of orange, like something you use to scrub soap scum. When he caught me looking, he told me that the landlord on the show _ Mr. Furley or whatever his name was _ didn__ try hard enough. __hat guy doesn__ try hard enough, Steve,_ he said. I felt weirdly ashamed when he said that. So much so that I went into his room and urinated on his bed.

On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap.

I think there is a complicated side effect to overcoming evil in that we are forever changed by it. I think after we ingest some of the cruelty of the world, it takes years off of our lives, but it also gives us wisdom and a little grace, hopefully a sense of compassion.

I pictured love as a big hairy giant with a dead fish in his mouth. Grizzly bear claws and his heart half out of his chest cause it__ too big and the lungs have to fit. He never stops walking. Over mountains. Through the desert. On top of icy lakes. Past huge cities. And he hunts and kills for you and always comes back with plenty to eat.

I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart; the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky

Once I heard Dantly tell Welton that the Native Americans used to call that particular part of the morning __etween the wolf and the dog_ because the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can__ tell what__ what. Is that a wolf on that hill or a dog? A man or a monkey? A saint or the devil?

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.