My friends say I have two speeds: fast and blistering.

It is a remarkable question- Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them?

They don't really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't even be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick.

They're fake bullets, so why do I feel like Im bleeding out?

Her mouth is always on the verge of a smile. It makes her look like there's always something amazing she needs to tell me, even when it's just hello.

Words got in the way. The things we felt the hardest--like what it was like to have a boy touch you as if you were made of light, or what it meant to be the only person in the room who wasn't noticed--weren't sentences; they were knots in the wood of our bodies, places where our blood flowed backward. If you asked me, not that anyone ever did, the only words worth saying were I'm sorry.

Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?