You're not responsible for everything, Parker. You can't control the way things end up. Stop trying.
It's just this emptiness between us, the stupid idea I could kiss it away, 
The fall takes no time and forever. 
I'm dying. I am dying. I have finally achieved what I set out to do. My heart is splitting open and I breathe in but no air gets into my lungs. 
She was supposed to be the strong one," she says. "Sloane."
"But I've gotten so much farther than her.
I don't know why it's the girls who always seem to have to take on that kind of burden. 
How are you feeling?" She rubs the back of her neck. "Stupid question."
"Well, ask me and I'll tell you I'm fucking great.
Real life is always quieter and anticlimactic somehow. But devastating all the same. 
Do you have a credit card or something?" I ask because who wouldn't have a credit card handy during the zombie fucking apocalypse. 
I keep my eyes fixed on those silhouettes in the distance and all I can think is how could we lost the world to something so still? 
Yeah, totally. I punch myself in the arms a lot. It's a real problem. 
Then I should be dead really soon, because you're stressing me out. 
We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the soundtrack of our own impending death. 
I hope I'm the ghost that belongs to her. 
I think some girls are just fucked up. 
Thank God I don't have to like her to love her, Holly 
I finally squint up at the face above and am relieved to find, not a wolf, but a woman, just like me. Until I see the uniform. 
Don't divide me into before and after. 
Tell Liz,' I say, 'the mean girl totally got what she deserved in the end. 
I couldn't talk him out of you. 
In the girls' bathroom, I run the water hot and hold my hands under it until I feel 
He shoves his hands in his pockets, which is okay by me because his hands are forever distracting, all the things they could do. 
If I can do things right, I don't see why everyone else can't. 
I will see my father in every anger. 
Maybe the only way our story can end is varying degrees of sad. 
He was planning to rape me -""Why would he ever -"
"Because he knew he'd get away with it.
It's a slow process; he always seems reluctant to let her go and I think she likes to savor that as much as possible. 
He's the boy who stopped and I'm the girl he stopped for and what happens to her, if he goes away? 
It's something my body does without checking with my head first, like the obligation to be nice to him is greater than myself. 
I want to feel this. I need it to hurt for me to feel it, I think. 
Funny how the last thing we want the world to see is almost the first thing to show. 
I woke up and the last piece of my heart disappeared. I opened my eyes and I felt it go. 
Why. Why. Why. WHY.The question my life had become.
It's when my body decides to remind me it can do more than I'll ever want it to, it is so painful. 
Because you made it here on a lot less" he says and he has no idea how on the mark he is. 
This is what pain feels like when it's happening now and I beg my body to know this difference. It won't listen to me. 
There's a girl out there everyone thinks is dead and maybe she is because you know all the ways there are to kill a girl? I do. 
How do you say that physically, you're okay, when everything is not. 
Yeah, sure," I say, and then, for good measure: "Whatever. 
Like I'd let you captain me. 
Time passes too quickly when you're getting ready to do something you don't want to do. 
I have never seen a more desperate symbol of hope since the world ended and I've never felt the world more desperate to make a mockery of it. 
The problem with alienating, self-destructive behavior is people get it into their heads it's a cry for help. It wasn't. 
I wonder if, even after all of this, he understands how fragile good things are in my hands and how many times they've been taken away from me. 
Thank you for visiting! Come again! Fuck this place.
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. 
You know," she says. "You're still alive. I don't know how many different ways I can try to tell you before it finally sinks in. 
Everyone should knowthere's no such thing as a decent human being. It's just an illusion. And when it's gone, it's really gone.
I take a deep breath. It smells suspiciously like bullshit in here. 
A successful piss on the side of the road and we didn't die. What a great time that was. 
Waiting around to be saved is like waiting to die and I have done more of both than anyone else in the room. 
You get away with a lot, even after you're caught. 
I spot a fly floating on the surface of the water, its little legs pumping madly as it fights to keep itself afloat. I know that feeling. 
We were beyond needing other people. Anyone else who happens on the both of us, they're just temps. 
She hates her heart, that misguided organ in her chest. Why didn't it warn her? 
I don't know why he still cares. What a stupid thing it is, to care about a girl. 
If life was fair, you wouldn't be here. 
Whatever's between us is that kind of new. 
I don't have time for the 'things change speech, Parker.""So give me the CliffNotes version.
I don't like you with Becky. She's not a very nice girl.''I don't like you with Jake. He's not me.
Eddie, I think ... sometimes lies bring you to the truth ... or help you reconcile with it ... 
I want to shove the question down his throat until he chokes on it. 
I'm hazy on remembering or maybe I'm just tired or maybe a part of my brain wants to sabotage me. 
Milo and I have this drinking game about Beth: every time she annoys me, we drink.She annoys me alot.
My dad always said we're at the mercy of something greater than ourselves and whatever humanity we don't show to others, we pay for. We're paying for. 
Becky, you're only standing there because I decided I didn't want to. 
You think I ever stopped wanting to die after the motel?" I ask. "You think a feeling like that just goes away? 
So? You have a boy's name.""And you have a dog's name.
