I didn’t know much about John Green’s “Paper Towns” before I started reading, but a few weird coincidences quickly presented themselves.

First, the story about a pair of kids, Quentin and Margo (and their friends), as they finish up high school in Orlando and do a bunch of “last” things together came as I was doing some last things with one of my closest friends before she moved to…Orlando.

Second, I started reading this book on May 5, and, well, this happened on page 27:

I could have read this book last year or four months from now, but apparently I got to it at exactly the right time.  And that time was following a couple of pretty heavy books, leaving me wanting something much less intense.

Margo convinces Quentin to go on a mission one night that he later learns involves getting a whole lot of revenge on a long list of her enemies.  But they have to stop for supplies:

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Well, first we’re going to Publix.”

This was the most true statement in the entire book for me.  When I lived in Florida, Publix was my life, especially their mango yogurt.  I visited a few years ago, and my first stop upon arriving at my aunt’s house was to stock up at Publix.

Margo is easily the badass of the two, and the one prone to offering epic assessments of their situation.  At one point she throws a fish through a guy’s window, much to the shock of Quentin.

“I mean, you couldn’t have just left it in his car?  Or at least on his doorstep?”
“We bring the fucking rain, Q.  Not the scattered showers.”

I may be borrowing that line to inspire my softball team. 

Another favorite line of Margo’s came as Quentin questioned whether she was worried about the future and what was ahead, what he called “forever.”

“Forever is composed of nows,” Margo says.  No matter how long you have, no matter how you spend it, it’s all a bunch of nows that come one after another.  And while you can do things to alter your future nows, when you’re in those moments you get to decide how to make them count.

Ultimately that’s all about connecting with other people, something Quentin identifies as happening only when we let ourselves be seen instead of the projected selves we want others to see.

“But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart.  And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs.”