Dead bodies are calm and silent—perfectly still, perfectly harmless. A corpse will never move, it will never laugh, and it will never judge. A corpse will never shout at you, hit you, or leave you. Far away from the zombies and junk that you see on TV, a corpse is actually the perfect friend. The perfect pet. I feel more comfortable with them than I do with real people.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I guess all we have left are awesome dreams.

Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't. It's like learning a foreign language: You can think about the words all you want, but you'll never be able to speak it until you suck up your courage and say them out loud.

I'm not scared anymore, I just ... I don't know. I think it's because I saw someone else, someone behind your face, like you'd taken off a mask. It was still you, but it wasn't. And I don't think that person is going to hurt me, or Marci, or anybody else, but ... I guess the thing is that I don't know anything about that person. At all. And that's what scares me more than anything - that there could be two people, so different, and one of them so secret.

APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy,' I said. I'd looked it up too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sounds; without it you become emotionally deaf. 'It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one.' 'How do you even know that?' she said. 'You're fifteen years old, for goodness' sake. You should be ... I don't know, chasing girls or playing video games.' 'You're telling a sociopath to chase girls?

Hello, Bradley,' said Mom. She'd regained her composure after my outburst, and now raised her camera. 'Stand close.' 'No, Mom,' I said. 'No pictures.' 'But you're friend's here now,' she said, waving us together. 'Smile!' 'I don't need a picture with-' the flash snapped '-another guy. That's great, Mom, thank you. Send that one to Dad and tell him we're going steady.