melanie: well, tell him wanda: what will happen then? melanie: you know what will happen. kyle broke the rules. jeb will shoot him, or they'll kick him ou. meybe ian will beat the snot out of him first.that would be fun to watch.

I was not allowed to think of him. That was something I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was getting better, and so the pain was something I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade-off was the never-ending numbness. Between pain and nothing, I'd chosen nothing.

"You’re exactly like Charlie." She'd sighed, resigned. "Once you make up your mind, there is no reasoning with you. Of course, exactly like Charlie, you stick by your decisions, too."

But on a clear, sunny day? How would she know to flee when she couldn't see any place for danger to hide?

We should have been wiser; we should have died yesterday.

Next time you want to hit me hit me with a baseball bat or a crowbar!

I stared into Jared's eyes, and the strangest thing happened. All the melting and melding I had just been through was shoved aside, into the smallest part of my body, the little corner that I took up physically. The rest of me yearned toward Jared with the same desperate, half-crazed hunger I'd felt since the first time I'd seen him here. This body barely belonged to me or to Melanie-it belonged to him.