I'm used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war.

Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults--cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.

It is a ruined-world, a nonsense-place.

Why couldn't you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?

Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.

"Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed... awake." Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again. "I'm tired of sleeping."

This is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.