Lauren Oliver

And now I realize Lindsay's not fearless. She's terrified. She's terrified that people will find out she's faking, bullshitting her way through life, pretending to have everything together when really she's just floundering like the rest of us. Lindsay, who will bite at you if you even look in her direction the wrong way, like on of those tiny attack dogs that are always barking and snapping in the air before they're jerked backward on the chains that keep them in one place.

How is it possible, I think, to change so much and not be able to change anything at all?

We'll walk together holding hands, and kiss in broad daylight, and love each other as much as we want to, and no one will ever try to keep up apart.

...I've never really had a party before.""Why did you have one now?" I say, just to keep him talking.He gives a half laugh. "I thought if I had a party, you would come.

Alex, please.__e balls his fists. __top saying my name. You don__ know me anymore.___ do know you._ I__ still crying, swallowing back spasms in my throat, struggling to breathe. This is a nightmare and I will wake up. This is a monster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together, broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, and whole, and mine again. I find his hands, lace my fingers through his even as he tries to pull away. __t__ me, Alex. Lena. Your Lena. Remember? Remember 37 Brooks, and the blanket we used to keep in the backyard____on__,_ he says. His voice breaks on the word.__nd I always beat you in Scrabble,_ I say. I have to keep talking, and keep him here, and make him remember. __ecause you always let me win. And remember how we had a picnic one time, and the only thing we could find from the store was canned spaghetti and some green beans? And you said to mix them____on__.___nd we did, and it wasn__ bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were so hungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me._ I__ gasping, feeling as though I am about to drown; I__ reaching for him blindly, grabbing at his collar.__top._ He grabs my shoulders. His face is an inch from mine but unrecognizable: a gross, contorted mask. __ust stop. No more. It__ done, okay? That__ all done now.___lex, please____top!_ His voice rings out sharply, hard as a slap. He releases me and I stumble backward. __lex is dead, do you hear me? All of that__hat we felt, what it meant__hat__ done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.___lex!__e has started to turn away; now he whirls around. The moon lights him stark white and furious, a camera image, two-dimensional, gripped by the flash. __ don__ love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never loved you.__he air goes. Everything goes. __ don__ believe you._ I__ crying so hard, I can hardly speak.He takes one step toward me. And now I don__ recognize him at all. He has transformed entirely, turned into a stranger. __t was a lie. Okay? It was all a lie. Craziness, like they always said. Just forget about it. Forget it ever happened.___lease._ I don__ know how I stay on my feet, why I don__ shatter into dust right there, why my heart keeps beating when I want it so badly to stop. __lease don__ do this, Alex.___top saying my name.

While other girls were blurry, displaying cracks or, at the very least, seams _ ripped jeans, coffee-stained T-shirts, hair that poufed up in the rain _ Sophia always looked sharp, clear, as if the resolution had been turned up on a microscope and angled straight at her, as if the money had formed a kind of shrink wrap that kept her protected from the normal destruction of the everyday.

Every day, streets papered with more and more for .Reward, reward, reward.Reward for information.If you see something, say something.A paper town, a paper world: paper rustling in the airm whispering to me, hissing out a message of posion and jealousy.If you know something, do something.I'm sorry, Lena.

I want to apologize to you,_ she says calmly.__h yeah? For what?_ I don__ have time for this. We don__ have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She__l be here, in the house . . .My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I__ worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn__ my concern, and it isn__ my fault, either.__or telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,_ she says. __or telling them about you and Alex.__ust like that, my brain powers down. __hat?"__ told them._ She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. ____ sorry. I was jealous.__ can__ speak. I__ swimming through a fog. __ealous?_ I manage to spit out.____ wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn__ understand what I was doing._ She shakes her head again.I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn__ make any sense. Hana__olden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. __ou were my best friend.___ know._ Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.__ou had everything._ I can__ stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. __erfect life. Perfect grades. Everything._ I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. __ had nothing. He was my one thing. My only__ The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. __hy couldn__ you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?

I came to find you last night," Lena says more quietly. "When I knew there was going to be a raid...I snuck out. I was there when__hen the regulators came. I barely made it out. Alex helped me. We hid in a shed until they were gone..."I close my eyes and reopen them. I remember wiggling into the damp earth, bumping my hip against the window. I remember standing, and seeing the dark forms of bodies lying like shadows in the grass, and the sharp geometry of a small she shed, nestled in the trees.Lena was there. It was almost unimaginable."I can't believe that. I can't believe you snuck out during a raid__or me." My throat feels thick again, and I will myself not to start crying. For a moment I am overwhelmed by a feeling so huge and strange, I have no name for it: It surges over the guilt and the shock and the envy; it plunges a hand into the deepest part of myself and roots me to Lena.

Things change after you die, though- I guess because dying is about the lonliest thing you can do.

Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?''Sometimes.''So why don't you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.'But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?

Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.

This is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.

You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.

And suddenly I am blindingly angry at Raven--for her lectures, and her stubbornness, and for thinking that the way that you help people is by driving them against a wall, by beating them down until they fight back.

That__ when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.Then nothing.

Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.