I have to admit that Christina is good—though I don’t like giving credit to Candor smart-mouths—and so is Peter—though I don’t like giving credit to future psychopaths.

Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide- open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.

We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.

But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.

If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.

I cross my arms. "It was a two minute conversation." "I don't think a smaller time frame makes it less unwise." He furrows his eyebrows and touches the corner of my bruised eye with his fingertips. My head jerks back, but he doesn't take his hand away. Instead he sighs. "You know, if you could just learn to attack first, you might do better." "Attack first?" I say. "How will that help?" "You're fast. If you can get a few good hits in before they know what's going on, you could win." He shrugs, and his hand falls.

But now, I am also learning this: we can be mended. We mend each other.