Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.

People don't get to choose their family, but if you have the family you would choose - that's happiness.

I__ broken. Fucked up. I feel sick. I can__ breathe. It__ like someone__ snaked their fingers around my heart, capturing it in a crushing grip. It__ Emma. This is her doing. Well, it won__ fucking bleed for her. It won__ bleed for anyone. It__ black. I__ dead inside.

Mel rolled her eyes. "You can't live your life based on 'what-ifs,' Liv. And change is inevitable. It's the one thing you can always count on. Stop worrying about what might or not happen and follow your heart. How can you expect to ever be happy if you don't?

Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?