The world, as far as I’m concerned, is like a huge mosaic, made up of thousands of tiny pieces of glass. When you lie on a hill and stare at clouds and think of all the directions to take your life—there are a million little glass squares to skip from.

Some people believe in fate. I don’t. Do want you want, just do it with reason, and it’s bound to get you somewhere. A quote I’d heard somewhere floated across my mind: “Think wrongly, if you please, but above all think for yourself.”

Think for yourself. The one time in my life that I hadn’t done it, it had nearly killed me. It had killed my sister. And that’s what I mean when I say that I don’t believe in fate—it was my foolish mistakes, not the sweeping hand of fate, that killed Angie.

A comet swooped across the sky, and my heart jumped with glee and with shock. Another tile.

Behind the comet, the sky was a swirl of rainbow hues, all beautiful and softly fading from one to the other. Such beauty I’d never seen before.

Millions of tiles.