Elizabeth Scott

I have been smashed and put back together so many times nothing works right. Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now beats.

When someone you love...when they die, you want it undone. You'd do anything to have them back, and it's easy to believe that if only this had happened or that had happened, everything would be fine. And that's what makes you angry. What makes you hate. You don't want to believe that sometimes bad things happen just because they do.

I see what grief does, how it strips you bare, shows you all the things you don't want to know. That loss doesn't end, that there isn't a moment where you are done, when you can neatly put it away and move on.

I always thought of grief as a blow that took everything out of you. And it is like that. But it stays, past that first hard hit. It stays and blows its breath into you. It's always there, reminding you of what you've lost. What's gone.

And that's what makes you angry. What makes you hate. You don't want to believe that sometimes bad things happen just because they do.

I've missed you so much it's felt like missing you is all I am. Like if someone looked inside me, there wouldn't be a skeleton and muscles and blood and nerves. There'd just be memories of you and all the things I've tried to say and ripped out of this notebook, all the things I want to say but can't because I don't have the words.

I am the living dead girl because I am too weak to die. I hate those crying dough women on TV because they are just like me, weak and broken and clinging to the hands that hold us under.

I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath.

The thing about hearts is that they always want to keep beating

It was nothing. We played tic-tac-toe for a while. You know we do that sometimes.""Oh, I know," Teagan says."Okay, how did you make that sound like we were rolling around ripping off each other's clothes?

Do you really think he was flirting with me?""Let's see. He gave you candy you hate - I saw your face - and a CD of songs..." He looks at the CD. "All of these are, like, twenty years old at least. Figures. Oh, and he groped your face. Sounds like true love to me.

How come you like Josh so much anyway? All he does is sit around drinking overpriced coffee and bitching about how awful things are""He cares about the world.""If he cared about the world, he'd donate the ten thousand dollars he must spend on coffee every year to charity. That would be doing something.

Okay, I guess you can come in.""Um, Hannah, you have to, you know, open the front door so I can actually come in.""I thought you were going to - you're standing under my window. Aren't you supposed to climb up here or something?""My ladder's at home. Also, you call throwing rocks at your window clichéd?

Are you reading?" I say. It's not that I don't think Finn can read or anything, but it's just - well, not what I expected to see. I figured Finn spent his time doing whatever it is guys who aren't Josh do when they aren't in school. Burping, or something."Try not to look so surprised," Finn says. "I read. I can count to ten. Sometimes I can even spell my own name.

I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting that yours will ever be.

Please. If you were mostly dead in the middle of the road I'd obviously stop. And then I'd watch you die."Kate to Will

There are a million rules for being a girl. There are a million things you have to do to get through each day. High school has things that can trip you up, ruin you, people say one thing and mean another, and you have to know all the rules, you have to know what you can and can't do.

All right, you caught me. I'm secretly obsessed with you and spend all my free time writing about you in my journal. 'Dear Diary, today Will was an ass for the 467th day in a row. He's so dreamy