An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm. I ran.

It is war now, and armies need symbols.

As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second, as though I’m looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.

When you love someone, when you care for someone, you have to do it through the good and the bad. Not just when you're happy and it's easy.

My former people were not totally wrong. Love is a kind of possession. It’s a poison. And if Alex no longer loves me, I can’t bear to think that he might love somebody else.

I'm mesmerized by the way his fingers move confidently along her skin, as though her body is his to reat and touch and tend to. She was mine before she was yours: The words are there, unexpectedly, surging from my throat to my tongue. I swallow them back.

I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?