It's the rule of the wilds. You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher. A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn't love me. He never loved me. It was all a lie. "The old Lena is dead." I say, and then push past him. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone. You must hurt or be hurt.

The mark of the procedure. A real one. Lu is cured.

It occurs to me that for a long time she has been doing her own version of resisting.

We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.

It is war now, and armies need symbols.

If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.