"More than a stunning debut. It is the announcement of a bold new literary voice"
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

You’re the reason that I bought this book today, and the reason that I bought it today and not when it first was released. I couldn’t read it then. It was too much, too close; years are coming to a close again (“The Year Turns ‘Round Again,” but we never were singing that song at the same time now, were we?). You still sting, like a papercut I forgot about until I get it wet. You’re like the window that looks closed but the cold still seeps in through it and makes me shake under the covers in bed at night. You’re in ever plane I see over head, you’re in ever khaki jacket and the smell of pipe tobacco and old maps; you’re the flicker between the film cells in old movies, and you’re going to live there for the rest of my life. T. E. L. and Mr. O’Toole are having coffee with you now. Or tea. Did you like tea better? I can’t remember. I can’t remember a lot of things anymore. I still wish I knew what happened to your horse, your rabbit, your airplane. You’re the tears when the Titanic goes down, you’re the breath I can see when Joey breathes out in the snow at the end of the movie and Albert blindly reaches out to him, you’re snowflakes that melt before they reach the ground, gaslight on the streets of Paris at midnight.
I miss you Livvee.