It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down.

The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.

Now, after so many years, I understand what the Coldness was and where it came from—this sense that everything is lost, and worthless, and meaningless.

And even though I'm standing in the middle of the biggest crowd I've ever seen in my life, I suddenly feel very alone.

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