They shouldn't call death passing on. They should call it leveling up. Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun.

I'd never really thought past the whole dying-for-the-sake-of-the-world part of things. When you're alive, you don't dwell on how you're going to spend your time once you're dead. You just figure you're gone, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself.

Books?" Ridley looked disgusted. "Carry?

Sunday night, I reread The Catcher in the Rye until I felt tired enough to fall asleep. Only I never got tired enough. And I couldn't read, because reading didn't feel the same.

Everything in Gatlin was rigged. Why would the carnival games be any different?

It was a promise she knew I might not be able to keep. But I made it anyway because I was going to find a way to make it true.

There was no one color that could paint Lena Duchannes. She was a red sweater and a blue sky, a gray wind and a silver sparrow, a black curl escaping from behind her ear.