clara

No, no. Not a genius. This is like what reading is like for you. You look at the squiggles and loops, and the puzzle opens until suddenly nothing means something, something more than the sum of the parts, right? I see one hunk of metal and then another, and the puzzle opens. They turn in my mind and just make sense. Together they all mean something.

The moment was surreal. A sometimes-autistic young man with two identities lecturing a room full of zombies on feelings and realities.

How easy it was to slip through the cracks alongside him. To fall in the very same trap I had committed to free him from.

My world had become his, or his mine; it was hard to say

And,_ Kay adds as her final touch, __hristian Prescott is my boyfriend.__ dislike her already.

Once again, my hero. And here I__ supposed to be the one saving him.

As a serf, poor Christian has already been killed several times in our class. Aside from dying of the Black Plague on the first day, he__ starved to death, had his hands cut off for stealing a loaf of bread, and been run down by his master__ horse just for kicks. He__ like Christian the fifth now.

As your abilities begin to grow, your angelic side will start to manifest itself in more noticeable ways.""My angelic side. Great. Like I don't have enough to deal with.""It's not so bad," Mom says. "You'll learn to control it.""I'll learn to control my hair?

Wanting and wishing are very different

Everyone wants a little bit of something beautiful.

We're all here. We're close to the truck, and we met Kenton, a fine citizen of Salem. We rescued Izzy and found our way through a very sad darkness, dangers that we knew from Izzy's Orion interpretation would be waiting for us. We're definitely on the right track.

You and I have a connection that nothing, not on heaven or earth, or even hell, could ever break. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. I__l hear you_

What's wrong with me? I lose my footing, in here.' He touched his head. 'When a neuro-typical looses their footing, they yell or escape to the TV, or maybe the doctor throws them on depression meds. But when I slip, I fall all the way through. I feel the ground give way and I'm gone. It's a crack -- a crack in what's real, and beneath there I'm stuck. Then, I guess I become someone else. Mom says I still know my name, but I walk a different world. The shrink calls it DID -- Dissociative Identity Disorder -- with a little added autism to spice up my other personality. I suppose he's right, but only I know how it feels to slip through the cracks. Then the monster shows up.

I'll never forget the way he tastes. It's not anything I can describe, a little sweet and a whole lot of spice, and it feels, in that moment, absolutely right.