Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.

I was crying for the little girl I had been, who had withstood terrifying nightmares of death and blood and war and maiming. And when I had tried to share those horrors, the shock on my friends' faces had told me I was not normal, and I should keep my dreams to myself.

A mind is a simulation that simulates itself.

Sarah, I__ going to take care of you whether you like it or not.

Honey, I have a feeling he doesn__ think of you as a friend. Have you seen the way he looks at you?__he glanced at him and as if he could feel her gaze, he turned his eyes on her. Soft and hard all at once. __eah,_ Mel said. __e promised to stop doing that.

You__e a good date,_ he said.__ou thought of it as a date?__e nodded. __rom the beginning.