And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.

But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: This is like music or dancing but better than both.

Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all. I told on them. I was jealous.

Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.

Things would get difficult again. But that was okay too. The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.

...the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.

Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.