Something in me, in my bruised heart, wakes up, and even though I'm terrified, I don't push the feeling away.

..."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 do not fall. I fell so hard so long ago there is nothing left for me to land on. I just keep falling and falling and falling.

I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever.

Cute" is one of those words people use when they know you're smart enough to realize "you've got so much personality" means "you're ugly.

The heart is a place with worm holes made by feelings you aren't supposed to have but do.

I thought living dead girls couldn't feel pain, thought I was emptied out but I'm not, I'm not.