..."Are you okay?" he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine.

I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath.

Josh pulls me aside. "Hey, About before, I just... I wanted to say ... well, I think you're pretty special." He says, kind of stumbling over the words a little. Like he's hesitant to say them, now i wish he'd hug me again. And then kiss me. But he doesn't. He just waves and walks off. I sigh. "Hannah, I just... I want you to know if I pause alot when I tell you how special you are I want you to think that I'm... very... very... deep," Finn says

I think you’re the saddest person I’ve ever met. It’s like you’re drowning in it.

It's bullshit. It's so easy to label people, to look at a list of symptoms and say, "This is who you are. This is what you are.

I'd dressed up and hoped and I was so tired of doing that, so tired of dreaming and being unable to stop it despite the fact that I'd seen, maybe better than anyone here, what dreams could do to you.

She became a story, one I have mostly forgotten. One I can't end because she died a long time ago.