I get that rush that comes when you know you're doing something wrong and are getting away with it, like stealing from the school cafeteria of getting tipsy at a family holiday without anyone knowing it.

i suppose that's the secret, if you're ever wishing for things to back the way they were. You just have to look up.

The old Lena is dead.

My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy - but it's never him, and each time it isn't, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.

The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons. You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.

I'm not scared, if that's what you're wondering. The moment of death is full of sound and warmth and light shooting away, arcing up and up and up, and if singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing... The rest you have to find out for yourself.