You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist.

I’ve never really had a party before.” “Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him talking. He gives a half laugh. “I thought if I had a party, you would come.

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

The mark of the procedure. A real one. Lu is cured.

I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.

like I am Alice in the Wonderland and have gotten too big for the room.