that's what it was like waking up in the crypts. no-longer-dead. but without her. like burning alive.

The first one, we’ll name Blue.

I get that rush that comes when you know you're doing something wrong and are getting away with it, like stealing from the school cafeteria of getting tipsy at a family holiday without anyone knowing it.

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness--but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood.

Maybe he sees it on my face, that fraction of a second when I let my guard down, because in that moment his expression softens and his eyes go bright as flame and even though I barely see him move, suddenly he has closed the space between us and he’s wrapping his warm hands over my shoulders—fingers so warm and strong I almost cry out—and saying, “Lena. I like you, okay? That’s it. That’s all. I like you.” His voice is so low and hypnotic it reminds me of a song. I think of predators dropping silently from trees: I think of enormous cats with glowing amber eyes, just like his.

We're on the other side of the fence now, Lena,' she says, tiredly, as she passes. "Don't you get it? You can't tell me what to feel.

I know that the whole point—the only point—is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.