It's a hard thing to hold a civil conversation after recalling that one party has used a Taser on the other, so both of them finished the walk in silence.

Do you know how to wrap a leg?" "I was born wrapping legs," I say stiffly, because I'm insulted. "Must've been a challenging delivery," Sean notes.

Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it excape. One step of not breathing.

It was as if I had thought all along I was a complete picture and he had revealed I was a puzzle and had taken me apart and put me back together again.

You're the nicest boy ever,", I told him, feeling undeserving and terrible. "You didn't have to get me anything. I like thinking about you thinking about me when I'm not around.

I smiled at the stacks, inhaling again. Hundreds of thousands of pages that had never been turned, waiting for me. The shelves were a warm, blond wood, piled with spines of every color. Staff picks were arranged on tables, glossy covers reflecting the light back at me. Behind the little cubby where the cashier sat, ignoring us, stairs covered with rich burgundy carpet led up to the worlds unknown. 'I could just live here,' I said.

It could kill you," Maura said. Then there was the awkward moment that arrives when two thirds of the people in the room know that the other third is supposed to die in fewer than nine months, and the person who is meant to die is not one of the ones in the know.