Feelings aren't forever. Time waits for no one, but progress waits for man to enact it.

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.

For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn't know: I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.

I need to live my life in the light of their deaths. I need to live.

If Cassie was invalidated because she caught the disease, or because Fred suspected her of it, I can only imagine what he will do to me and to my family if he discovers that the cure did not work perfectly.

I put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.