Okay, okay.” I set my hand on top of his and guide it to my chest, so it’s right over my heart. “Feel my heartbeat. Can you feel it?” “Yes.” “Feel how steady it is?” “It’s fast.” “Yes, well, that has nothing to do with the box.” I wince as soon as I’m done speaking. I just admitted to something. Hopefully he doesn’t realize that.

I didn't know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose.

I pause a second. He doesn't look at me the way Will, Christina, and Al sometimes do - like I am too small and too weak to be of any use, and they pity me for it.

You know what mom told me once? She said that everyone has some evil inside them, and the first step to loving anyone is to recognize the same evil in ourselves, so we're able to forgive them.

I laugh, and it's laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I've ever known is coming apart.

Change, like healing, takes time.

Living without virtues is to live divorced from society, seperated from the most important thing in life, community.