I know I must look like a fish, standing there with my mouth gaping open, but I’m.
There’s always going to be a person laughing and somebody getting laughed at. The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.
Once you let in the word, once you allow it to take root, it will spread like a mold through all of your corners and dark spaces – and with it, the questions, the shivery, splintered fears, enough to keep you permanently awake.
The disease. Amor deliria nervosa. You can’t catch it from me. I’m safe.” Alex told me that very same thing, once. I push the memories of him away, willing them deep into the darkness. “And.
They’re teenagers. They do the opposite of what you say. That’s part of the deal.
Is it even remotely, conceivably possible.
I don’t know whether these feelings – this thing growing inside of me – is something horrible and sick or the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Either.
So many questions crowd my brain at once.
Then he turns his smile to me for just a second, just a second, but long enough for my whole body to light up like a Christmas display.
Maybe we were always broken. Maybe I was always a liar, and Mia was always weak. Maybe what happened to Summer didn’t turn us but only revealed what was already there.
Back at home, I shower in too-hot water, until my skin is pink.
Nothing says romance like industrial-sized rolls of toilet paper.
You shouldn’t make people feel bad just because they’re not, like, perfect or whatever.
A sharp blade of sadness goes through me, deep and quick.
I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him. Please.
This is my mission, the job that I have been given by Raven: Watch the DFA. Observe. Blend. They.
We’re standing in the middle of a graveyard. Alex.
Sometimes, on sleepless nights, we wonder if they’re right.
Then his eyes continue to sweep, and my heart comes hammering back against my ribs. I’m just being paranoid. Julian fumbles with the.
Both of us freeze. The Scavengers, too, freeze. Their footsteps stop; their voices fall silent. And then the light seeps.