Amor deliria nervosa isn't a disease of love. It's a disease of selfishness.

For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn't know: I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

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.

But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn't - though he couldn't - ever love me back.

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess we saved each other.

Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.

That's all I want. Just you and me. Always.