Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums.

That's the thing about faith. It works.

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.

I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took

amazingly, i'd actually forgotten that i'm supposed to be plain. i'm so used to alex telling me i'm beautiful. i'm so used to feeling beautiful around him. a hollow opens up in my chest. this is what life will be like without him: everything will become ordinary again. i'll become ordinary again.

My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart.

They didn’t get me, I should have said. They saved me.