People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.

But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven.

The tunnels may be long, and twisted, and dark; but you are supposed to go through them.

I know that the whole point—the only point—is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

You must hurt, or be hurt.

I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.

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.