Brian James

My dad believes that bad disguises itself - that danger hides. I think it's the opposite. The truly horrible things about the world are always reaching out for you.

Because there__ nothing wrong with me,_ Alec says. __ou know what is? Our society is so screwed up from top to bottom, everything about it, that it__ become impossible to fix. It__ easier to change people and make them fit into something that__ broken. Know what I mean?

When did life start being something you had to work at and not something that just is?

The last great escape. I was done gambling, done betting on a ship that would never come in. I would cash in my chips while I was ahead. I didn't want to suffer the growing old, didn't want to wait until my memory went. It was all so tiresome. I would just go out in a blaze of glory before the parasites of sadness got at me and made me bitter. After that's the American way: take your own life before everything else takes it from you.

Puberty flicked a switch inside of them and dreams were replaced by hormones and college prep courses and varsity sports while I continued to look for faeries in the woods behind my house.

The boy I used to know as Thomas Merker has been erased--replaced with a personality programmed by television and commercials to act a certain way.

My memories are like a shuffled deck of cards, each one coming up at random.

Some memories are presents that I'm unable to unwrap over and over.