I need you to be happy. I need one of us to be happy.

Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.

I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don't think I'm so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without ever really being aware of it--a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking. I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure when it will come.

Sometimes,” Sam says, “I can’t tell when you’re lying.” “I never lie,” I lie.

He’s quiet then. We lie next to each other, twin corpses waiting for burial.

Everyone danced -- sweaty bodies packed tight, drunk with sound.