Nobody ever really sees me the way I am, underneath everything. But she did. She does.

Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I'm a slug.

I need your help," says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila's, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk.

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’ve stripped my life down,” he told me. “I don’t need much. I have all the company I want to keep right in here.” He shot himself in the head with his fingers. “People don’t understand about the need to live simply. They make appointments all day. They even schedule their own deaths. The first time they’ll have freedom to really be themselves is when they no longer exist. But up here, there’s nothing but me and the sky. A million billion stars.

Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.

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