If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)

by Gayle Forman

Dad was still smiling but I could tell he had turned serious because he slowed down his speech. “You don’t. You just work through it. You just hang in there.”

I shouldn’t have to care. I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.

I’d never expected to fall in love. I was never the kind of girl who had crushes on rock stars or fantasies about marrying Brad Pitt. I sort of vaguely knew that one day I’d probably have boyfriends (in college, if Kim’s prediction was anything to go by) and get married. I wasn’t totally immune to the charms of the opposite sex, but I wasn’t one of those romantic, swoony girls who had pink fluffy daydreams about falling in love.

“But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.”

I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”