Max?' he asked.'Yeah?''...What are you doing?''Shooting people.

For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted. Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?

A million possible endearments ran through his head. But he said, __elp.

You dance?___ think that might be overly optimistic,_ he said. __ do something. I__l try not to hurt you.

Isn__ he cute? That he thinks he has a sense of humour?

He__ never been shy, but he__ always been a little uncertain around girls. He just couldn__ believe they liked him.