“He turned the music up loud. So what if it would deafen him? It made him happy. Like it had so many times before.”

“He considered the hard times in his life. All the things he had been afraid of. All those years wasted, he told himself, because I was terrified of being different. That's why all us fifty-four-year-olds end up looking so much alike. All of us are terrified of being different.”

“He turned the music up loud. So what if it would deafen him? It made him happy. Like it had so many times before.”