Courtney Summers

Mom and Dad exchange a nervous glance and have a telepathic conversation about it. I hear every word. Do we let her out? It's past curfew. True, but look at that__t least she asked! I know! I can hardly believe it! She could have sneaked out, but she asked! I know! We're good parents! "What time will you be back?" Dad asks.

Dad was thirsty, not given to great displays of affection, like his father and his father's father before him. A long line of self-indulgent men who couldn't give love but lived to take it, which isn't the same as receiving it. They were all in so much pain and that's always the perfect excuse.

It's okay, we can go back from this." It comes out of his mouth so kind - he means it - and it just makes me feel worse. That he can kiss me like this and change everything, but still promise me nothing has to change because I can't promise him anything.

I think you're crazy good at this survival stuff, Cary."His shoulders sag. He gives me a small, relieved smile and we start walking again, his step a little lighter than it was before. It feels strange to have that kind of power over someone."I mean, you're crazy good at it for a stoner who couldn't seem to get his shit together academically at all," I add.

Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there's a space between us, enough to paralyze me with all of the things I could do to her next. I could raise my hand and hit her in the face or bring my knee into her stomach, take a fistful of her hair and rip it out of her skull. You don't get to do this when you're a girl, so when the opportunity for violence finally presents itself, I want all of it at once.

I elbow my way through the mass of people to get to my locker because there's something immensely satisfying about the toughest part of my arm connecting with the softest part of everyone else.

The sooner you make a mistake and learn to live with it, the better. You're not responsible for everything. You can't control the way things end up.

There is nothing like discovering your own secrets in someone else__ story. Those thoughts and feelings you believed were too ugly or strange or idealistic or desperate or whimsical or hungry or sad they had to be just you because there could be no other place for them, anywhere. Books that make you realize you__e not alone, you never were. Those are the ones I like best.

She hates her heart, that misguided organ in her chest. Why didn't it warn her?

It's amazing how bad you can make the truth sound. As long as you keep it partially recognizable when you spit it out, a crowd will eat it up without even thinking about how hard you chewed on it first.

I will see my father in every anger.

I__ sorry,_ he tells me.I sit down on the bed. He returns to the view of the street below. I follow his gaze and I see the infected walking slowly back and forth.__t__ okay,_ I say.__kay,_ he says. He nods. __ood.__e puts the gun under his chin and pulls the trigger.

Behind the building was a field and when the potpourri scent of her cleaner made me sneeze, I went outside. There were calves there, these sweet things that watched me with less interest than I watched them. There was this raggedy one, sitting in the middle of the field, its mother nearby. I didn__ realize it was sick until it tried to get up and it couldn__. It kept trying and it couldn__ and then, eventually__t didn__. After a while, a truck drove in. A man and a boy got out, looked it over while its mother stood close. It was dead, the calf. Dead and too heavy to load into the truck bed, so they tied a rope around its neck, tied the other end to the truck and dragged it off the field like that. Its mother watched until it disappeared and when it was out of view, she called for it. Just kept calling for it so long after it was gone. Sometimes I feel something like that, between my mom and me. That I__ the daughter she keeps calling for so long after she__ been gone.