In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla.

The beautiful thing about driving was that it stole just enough of his attention - car parked on the side, maybe a cop, slow to speed limit, time to pass this sixteen-wheeler, turn signal, check rearview, crane neck to check blind spot and yes, okay, left lane.

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.

Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.

And I vaguely remember her smiling at me from the door way the glittering ambiguity of a girls smile, which seems to promise an answer to the question, but never gives it. The question, the one we’ve all been asking since girls stopped being gross, the question that is to simple to be uncomplicated: Does she like me or does she LIKE me?

More than anything, I felt the unfairness of it, the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can't due to deadness, and then I leaned forward, my forehead against the back of Takumi's headrest, and I cried, whimpering, and I didn't even feel sadness so much as pain.

It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.