He looked at me like I was beautiful.

Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.

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

We should be protected from the people who will leave us in the end, from all the people who will disappear or forget us.

Everytime he brushes me with his fingers, time seems to tether for a second, like it is in danger of dissolving. The whole world is dissolving, I decide, except for us. Us.

And when we are with Alex, I might as well not be there. They speak in a language of whispers and giggles and secrets; their words are like a fairy-tale tangle of thorns, which place a wall between us.

It's a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It's a miracle I'm even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.