Lauren Oliver

I'd rather die my way than live yours.

When you're completely free, you're also completely on your own.

But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

I'd never undetstood how Hana Could lie so often and easily. But just like anyhting else, lying becomes easier the more you do it.

She always imagined their voices entangled somewhere in the wires when they spoke, caught up in a grid she didn't fully understand, passing back and forth. Once the calls were disconnected, she imagined the echoes of old conversations would be trapped there, floating back and forth with no exit, like ghosts.

I think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita__, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, like rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.

I tear down Baxter, which loops around the last mile down to Back Cove.And then I stop short. The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove.The water is an enormous mirror, tipped with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the bend, the sun__urved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway__ets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark.Alex was right. It was gorgeous__ne of the best I__e ever seen.

My boyfriend's an idiot," I say as soon as he lurches

Why do you flirt with Mr. Daimler? He's a perv, you

Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?Is it really so much worse than what you do?Think about it.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

You__e angry at me,_ she says.I stop crying at once. My whole body goes cold and still. She squats down beside me, and even though I__ careful not to look up, not to look at her at all, I can feel her, can smell the sweat from her skin and hear the ragged pattern of her breathing.__ou__e angry at me,_ she repeats, and her voice hitches a little. __ou think I don__ care.__er voice is the same. For years I used to imagine that voice lilting over those forbidden words: I love you. Remember. They cannot take it. Her last words to me before she went away.She shuffles forward and squats next to me. She hesitates, then reaches out and places her palm against my cheek, and turns my head toward hers so I__ forced to look at her. I can feel the calluses on her fingers.In her eyes, I see myself reflected in miniature, and I tunnel back to a time before she left, before I believed she was gone forever, when her eyes welcomed me into every day and shepherded me, every night, into sleep.__ou turned out even more beautiful than I__ imagined,_ she whispers. She, too, is crying.The hard casement inside me breaks.__hy?_ is the only word that comes. Without intending to or even thinking about it, I allow her to draw me against her chest, let her wrap her arms around me. I cry into the space between her collarbones, inhaling the still-familiar smell of her skin.There are so many things I need to ask her: What happened to you in the Crypts? How could you let them take you away? Where did you go? But all I can say is: __hy didn__ you come for me? After all those years__ll that time__hy didn__ you come?_ Then I can__ speak at all; my sobs become shudders.__hhh._ She presses her lips to my forehead, strokes my hair, just like she used to when I was a child. I am a baby once again in her arms__elpless and needy. ____ here now.__he rubs my back while I cry. Slowly, I feel the darkness drain out of me, as though pulled away by the motion of her hand. Finally I can breathe again. My eyes are burning, and my throat feels raw and sore. I draw away from her, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand, not even caring that my nose is running. I__ suddenly exhausted__oo tired to be hurt, too tired to be angry. I want to sleep, and sleep.__ never stopped thinking about you,_ my mother says. __ thought of you every day__ou and Rachel.

Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here__olid, real, on my side__akes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick

I used to think that's what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.

It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed.

I guess that's what saying good-bye is always like--like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you're in the air, there's nothing you can do but let go.

This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.

Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself--to get lost. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry.