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.

But that's the problem with love - it acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control.

I love you. They can't take it away.

And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

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

It was a bird. A bird struggling through stickiness: a bird coated in paint, floundering in its nest, splashing color everywhere. Red. Red. Red. Dozens of them: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches. Red means run.

That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.