He's looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain.

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

This is the real unwritten rule: You don't want what you know you shouldn't. And I haven't just broken that rule. I have wrecked it, smashed it, and still... And still I want.

Whatever happened to me just now has gotten to me, broken past the fragile shell I've built. More than my memory is gone. My soul has wings that beat to a heart I don't understand and I see things, feel things that I know aren't from here, but that are so real.

My full name is Lauren Lee Smith. Of all the names I could have been given, that's the one I got. Lauren Lee Smith. It has all the personality of a toaster.

Well as much as I'm sure the people next door who are pretending they aren't looking at me would like to hear what I have to say, I'd rather say it to just you.

I liked him first, but it doesn't matter. I still like him. That doesn't matter either. Or at least, it's not supposed to.