I am fed up. I am fed up with tears and weakness. But there isn't much I can do to stop them.

That execution will take place here." She runs her fingertips over the table beneath her. "On this table. I thought it would be interesting to show you." "I knew what would happen when I came here," I say. "It's just a table. And I'd like to go back to my room now.

Every tattoo I got with them is a mark of their friendship, and almost every time I have laughed in this dark place was because of them. I don’t want to lose them. But I feel like I have already.

His fingers leave streaks of cold on my skin, invisible to the eye, and I think about wrapping his shirt around my fist and pulling him in to kiss me; I think about pressing myself against him, but I can't, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.

He smiles in my memory. A curled lip. Straight teeth. Light in his eyes. Laughing, teasing, more alive in memory than I m in reality. It was him or me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.

I don't really control the story. I just let it go where it wants to go. I have no idea what's going to happen in the end or who's going to live, so it's kind of like me saying, "I don't know, guys! Just wait." That's what I'm doing!

Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle.