My chest ached, my body speaking a language my head didn't quite understand. I waited. But Grace, the only person in the world I wanted to know me, just ran a wanting finger over the cover of one of the new hardcovers and walked out of the store without ever realising I was there, right within reach.

With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare's head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys.

I try to think of something catchy to say, but there's nothing but irritation that something that was funny yo an eleven-year-old boy is still funny to a seventeen-year-old one.

It seemed like the best weapons in my life had always been the most innocuous: empty plastic bins, a blank CD, an unmarked syringe, my smile in a dark room.

Sam?" Rachel asked. "Do you know you have the saddest sad face ever?

Sam: “I—it’s—I’m not an animal.

Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches that had been cut into circles for a fancy tea party.