Someday she will be saved, and the past and all its pain will be rendered as smoothly palatable as the food we spoon to our babies.

I hate both of my parents right now: for sitting quietly in our house, while out in the darkness my heart was beating away all of the seconds of my life, ticking them off one by one until my time was up; for letting the thread between us stretch so far and so thin that the moment it was severed for good they didn't even feel it.

Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

This is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.

This was what true fear was--that you could never know other people, not completely. That you were always just guessing blind.

Raven jerks and stiffens. For a second, I think she is only surprised: Her mouth goes round, her eyes wide. Then she begins teetering backward, and I know that she is dead. Falling, falling, falling . . .

We're on the other side of the fence now, Lena,' she says, tiredly, as she passes. "Don't you get it? You can't tell me what to feel.