I put my forehead on his collarbone, place one hand on his chest. Its rhythm reassures me: He is real, and he is now.

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.

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.

You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist

Not gray, exactly. Right before the sun rises there's a moment when the whole sky goes this pale nothing color-not really gray but sort of, or sort of white, and I've always really liked it because it reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.

For the first time in my life I've done something for me and by choice and not because somebody told me it was good or bad.

willing me to understand: that people should be sacrificed to causes, that beauty can be built on the backs of the dead.