Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.

There's still always the possibility that I've gone totally, clinically cuckoo. But somehow I don't think so anymore. An article I once read said that crazy people don't worry about being crazy - that's the whole problem.

The first time I saw you, at the Governor, I handn't been to watch the birds at the border in years. But that's what you reminded me of. You were jumping up, and you were yelling something, and your hair was coming loose from your ponytail, and you were so fast..." He shakes his head. "Just a flash, and then you were gone, Exactly like a bird.

My parents were pretty liberal, but they were still parents. I definitely had my teenage rebellion.

And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

No wonder the regulators decided on segregation of boys and girls: Otherwise, it would have been a nightmare, this feeling angry and self-conscious and confused and annoyed all the time.

I want to be healed and whole and perfect again, like a misshapen slab of iron that comes out of the fire glowing, glittering, razor-sharp.