If that moment had been a real thing, it would've been a butterfly, flapping and fluttering toward the sun.

His wife's a brand of Christian that forbids a gathering that involves young women dancing in the streets but not races where men die

It was a strangely disorienting feeling, to have something you'd relied on for so long start to change, like finding out that gravity no longer worked on Mondays.

I couldn't think of anything to say. I was idiotically entranced by the way he said "Grace." The tone of it. The way his lips formed the vowels. The timbre of his voice stuck in my head like music.

You're not that girl,' Cole said, sounding tired. 'Trust me, I've seen enough of them to know. Look. Don't cry. You're not that girl either.' 'Oh yeah? What girl am I?' 'I'll let you know when I figure it out. Just don't cry.

"Grace," I said, my vision swirling now because of her blood smeared across my wrists, "Can you hear me?" She nodded then stumbled to her knees. I knelt beside her; her eyes were huge and afraid and my heart was breaking. "I'll come find you, I said. "I promise I'll come find you. Don't forget me. Don't-don't lose yourself."

My friend is having his period," I told the pizza guy, and handed him his tip. "He needs Britney and extra cheese to get him through it. I'm trying to be supportive.