it seemed a lifetime ago i'd lain in bed with Lena and felt her breath tickling my chin and held her while she slept, felt her heart beating through her skin to mine. it was a lifetime ago. everything was different.

It's the way he says my name: like music.

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.

Juliet!' I whip around but not quickly enough. She's swallowed by the crowd, the gap that allowed her to break for the door closing just as quickly as it opened, a shifting Tetris pattern of bodies.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you.

There's still always the possibility that I've gone totally, clinically cuckoo. But somehow I don't think so anymore. An article I once read said that crazy people don't worry about being crazy - that's the whole problem.

With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.