Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.

My boyfriend's an idiot," I say as soon as he lurches away."A cute idiot," Ally corrects me."That's like saying 'a cute mutant.' Doesn't exist.

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.

For a split second, he had looked almost like my Alex again.

I don't know where to go. I don't know what comes now." "Don't worry," Will said. "We'll figure something out." Liesl managed to smile at him. She liked that word: *we*. It sounded warm and open, like a hug.

This is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.

Perhaps this was how the sparrows did it too; perhaps they were looking so hard at the peaks and tips of the new rooftops coated with dew, and the vast new horizon, that they only forgot that they did not know how to fly until they were already in midair.