So many of the things I've wanted are the things I've been taught to fear.

There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.

There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.

I used to have only one name; it used to mean something.

He kissed back, all the pages spread out around us like riddles waiting to be solved. Let them wait. Let my genes unravel, my hinges come loose. If my fate rests in the hands of a madman, let death come and bring its worse. I'll take the ruined craters of laboratories, the dead trees, this city with ashes in the oxygen, if it means freedom. I'd sooner die here than live a hundred years with wires in my veins.

For males twenty-five is the fatal age. For women it's twenty. We are all dropping like flies.