Fourth period I have "life skills", which is what they call gym when you're old enough to be offended by forced physical activity (Elody thinks they should call it slavery instead, for accuracy).

i feel like a curtain has dropped away and i'm seeing people for who they really are, different, and sharp, and unknowable.

It's going to be okay. Words that mean nothing. really, just sounds intoned into vastness and darkness, little scrabbling attempts to latch on to something when we're falling.

He was still in love with you, anyway.

I don't know whether these feelings - this thing growing inside of me - is something horrible and sick or the best thing that's ever happened to me. Either way, I can't stop it. I've lost control. And the truly sick thing is that despite everything, I'm glad.

Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose, either. If we didn't get out hearts stomped on, shattered; if we didn't have to patch and repatch it until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together by who knows what

it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.