And you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you've ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry.

I'm overwhelmed with sadness for everything that was lost, and filled with anger toward the people who took it away. My people-or at least, my old people. I don't know who I am anymore, or where I belong. That's not totally true...I know I belong with Alex.

...if you are one tardy away from missing out on a big competition, you should probably make your coffee at home.

All this time, I thought we were growing apart because I was leaving Lena behind. But really it was the reverse. She was learning to lie. She was learning to love.

"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."

I’ve been trying so hard not to think his name, not to even breathe the idea of him

They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all. But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.