if you were older you might agree with me. you might say that real love steals nothing. you might say that real love leaves a person intact. you would be wrong, jane. love is a greedy toddler who knows only the word 'mine.

It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though.

And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.

Our moment had passed somehow. I was different. He was, too. Without our “madness” to unite us, there wasn’t anything much there. Or maybe too much had happened in too short a time. It’s like when you take a trip with someone you don’t know very well. Sometimes you can get very close very quickly, but then after the trip is over, you realise all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travellers, if that makes any sense.

There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.

Win walked over to me. He held out his palm. In the middle of it was a single black sequin from the dress Scarlet had lent me. "You lost this," he said. I giggled, slightly embarrassed to be leaving bits of myself behind. "I'm shedding.

I was just thinking... isn't it lucky that we decided to become co-editors? If one takes a blow to the head, the other can fill in. If the other's lung spontaneoulsy collapses, the one can fill in. It's a perfect system once you think about it." ~Will Landsman