You in trouble?” Sam asks. The way he says it, I wonder if he’s thinking about how to get out of here if I am.

You okay?" Anton asks, looking at me like he's trying to figure out if I'm drunk. His plans depend on me. I look as blank as possible and hope that it freaks him out. No point in my being the only miserable one.

People said that video games were bad because they made you numb to death, made you register entrails splattering across a screen as a sign of success. In that moment, Val thought that the real problem with games was that the player was suppossed to try everything. If there was a cave, you went in it. If there was a mysterious stranger, you talked to him. If there was a map, you followed it. But in games, you had a hundred million billion lives and Val only had this one.

I don't lie," I lied.

Poisonous jealousy thrummed through my veins.

There’s nothing like a gunshot to make you the life of the party.

Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.