Courtney Summers

“I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can't break this window. I can't even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone at risk. I won't let myself do that.I'm not selfish like Lily.I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I pres so heard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I'm hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control.”

“You think I ever stopped wanting to die after the motel?" I ask. "You think a feeling like that just goes away?”

“And that I miss her, that I need her, and this kind of missing, this kind of need, the kind of emptiness it leaves behind is worse than waking up one day and finding the whole world has collapsed in on itself, that I was over longer before it was.”

“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.”

“He tells me its going to be okay until all the words blur together into a hum that makes me close my eyes and I start to go away and five, ten, fifteen minutes later, I'm aware of my hand sliding down his lap and then nothingness and then the gentle sensation of his index finger pressing into my open palm and then his hand is at my face, running his fingers across my skin and I'm so awake.”

“Uh, what are you doing?''What does it look like I'm doing?' Jake asks, settling into the seat beside me. The bus jerks forward. 'I'm sitting beside you.''No, you're not. Your seat is in the middle. Nice try, though.'He has the audacity to ignore me, sets his book bag on his lap and rummages through it. After a minute, he pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it to me.I unfold it. 'A love letter? How sweet.''No.' He turns pink. 'It's just something I found on the Internet-''Porn? You shouldn't have.”

“I am so sad. I am so sad it makes me heavier than the sum of my parts. I shift, restless, but it doesn’t help. It’s like—time. All this time in here is on me, has its hooks in me. Maybe if I sleep more, I’ll wake up and I’ll feel different, but I can’t. The storm is really happening now and it makes the room feel emptier. Makes me feel emptier.”

“I close my eyes and lean my head against the seat, and the word fuck just repeats itself over and over in my head, because fuck.”

“I’m 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.“It’s okay,” I say.“Okay,” he says. He nods. “Good.”He puts the gun under his chin and pulls the trigger.”

“I move closer to the glass, as close as I can get to it, begging her, begging Lily, begging Grace, begging all of them to tell me what's left, to just tell me while the girl pushes against the window, turns her tiny hands into tiny fists, begging me for a taste of - life.My life.Lily disappears. Grace. They all leave, they're gone, they will never be here again. But the wright of what they've shown me is settling into my bones. I don't know if I will keep it, but just in this moment, however brief, I feel closer to it that I ever have before...The dead girl presses her face against the glass. She wait for me to tell her what's next.”

“You need to bury it," Cary tells me. "All of that's over. You have to be here now.”

“I don't know how I'm going to do this, move through the hours like someone who wants to still be breathing when I had so firmly made up my mind to stop.”

“I am so sad it makes me heavier than the sum of my parts.”

“Cary's going to give them the rundown on everything we've managed to piece together about what happened before Baxter got in and the possibility that he's lying and then we'll all be suspicious. I stayed behind because I feel sick and tired and Cary said it's good if one of us stays because it will prevent Baxter from getting suspicious of his suspicion of him. Rhys said it might make him more suspicious. And then suspicious stopped seeming like a real word.”

“I wouldn't have left you like that. Not like she did to me." I swallow hard. "She always said I'd die without her and she left anyway.""But you didn't die," He says."I did," I say. "I'm just waiting for the rest of me to catch up.”

“Maybe the only way our story can end is varying degrees of sad.”

“Waiting around to be saved is like waiting to die and I have done more of both than anyone else in the room.”

“I've been variations of hurt my whole life.”

“The thing no one tells you about surviving, about the mere act of holding out, is how many hours are nothing because nothing happens. They also don’t tell you about how you can share your deepest secrets with someone, kiss them, and the next hour it’s like there’s nothing between you because not everything can mean something all the time or you’d be crushed under the weight of it.”

“This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell.”

“it's blindingly awful and awfully satisfying all at the same time.”

“You know how you feel when you meet someone and they just give you the impression they're living on this entirely different planet from everyone else? That's sort of how I felt when I met you.”

“The fall takes no time and forever.”

“You get away with a lot, even after you're caught.”

“Anyway," Jake says. I turn back to him. “I just wanted to start over a good note, that’s all.”I have to put this poor guy out of his misery. “Look, Jake, I’m not in the market for –“ I almost say a boyfriend, which is true, but this is even truer: “People”.”

“I take a deep breath. It smells suspiciously like bullshit in here.”

“I think there’s nothing left for me. I don’t think that for everyone else.”“So what do they have that you don’t at this point?”I press my lips together. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t want to talk about how everyone has something even if they don’t really have it anymore, that what they had makes them strong enough for this, to keep going.”

“This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test."But I think she's wrong. I think this is a test.It has to be.”

“Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they're swallowed into other, bigger noises.This is what it sound like when the world ends.”

“I thought it could be something, I mean, eventually." Harrison finally looks at us. "My life I thought-but I mean... it's nothing.""Don't cry" Grace says. "You have a lot of time.""No, I don't.""Yeah, you do.""No.-""Yeah! Yeah, you do. It's okay. Look-"She does something that is so amazingly selfless and also gross. She tilts Harrison's face up and gives him a sweet kiss on the lips and it lasts long enough for him to taste her back, to move his mouth against hers.Harrison stares at her dumbfounded but he's stopped cryingShe is so nice.”

“I will see my father in every anger.”

“Is this what it's like to get close to other people--you do something insane together and then you have to share everything even if you don't really want to?”

“If life was fair, you wouldn't be here.”

“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.”

“She always said I'd die without her and she left anyway.""But you didn't." he says."I did," I say. "I'm just waiting for the rest of me to catch up.”

“Death has been here and where death has been no light shall ever be .”

“The repeat is always the killer. Everything inside you goes into saying the word once, but sorry is the kind of word the person you say it to always wants to hear twice. ”

“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.”

“I feel the space beside me in a way that knows he's been gone a while. and my chest is winding itself tight with everything that means for me. What does that mean for me. I don't move because I don't want to move. I keep my eyes closed because I don't want to open my eyes.But eventually you have to move.Eventually you have to open your eyes.There's no note.”

“The people feel and look the same, like they've settled here even though they know there's something more-something better-just beyond where they are.Small-town life.”

“I woke up and the last piece of my heart disappeared. I opened my eyes and I felt it go.”

“Funny how the last thing we want the world to see is almost the first thing to show.”

“We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the soundtrack of our own impending death.”

“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—at 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.”

“Oh" She seems relieved. "So you weren't—""Don't worry, Ms.Grey. I wasn't drinking, smoking, toking or snorting in school. I keep the recreational drug use at home where it belongs.”

“There's always this one girl. She's desperate and she's weird and she's jealous, and you're stuck with her, no matter how hard you try to get her off your back. Just throw some really fucked-up self-esteem issues into the mix and you have Kara.”

“If anyone else said that to me, I think I’d roll my eyes, but Culler saying it to me means me committing it to memory and locking it inside so I’ll always have it.”

“I want to go into the sympathy card business. . . Forget sappy messages about overcoming. I want ones that say NOW YOU’LL BE A LESSER PERSON THAN YOU WERE or WE CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND or I CAN UNDERSTAND BECAUSE SOMEONE I KNOW DIED TOO or maybe something about how grief can make your skin feel sore and bruised and electric because that’s how my skin has felt ever since, except for my hands.”

“I take a swig from Milo’s flask and hand it back to him. He screws the top back on. He inherited the flash from his grandfather and stole the liquor from his mother. The circle of life.”

“She was young and alive, untouchable. Why did she want to go?”