David Levithan

“I was still thinking he might come after me. Even after he left.”

“I never said a bad word about him. The whole time the two of your were together. Not one bad thing.”

“You didn't even know my name, I thought. You're just repeating what he said.”

“I wondered if this was how you'd felt.I wondered if I was making myself feel how you'd felt.I knew it wasn't a choice. It was just what my mind was doing.Although I could've been fighting it more.”

“Where is your homework?" Mr. McNulty asked.It's with Ariel."There's no such thing as homework," I said."What?""I mean, I left it at home.”

“What is the answer, Evan?" Ms Granger asked.Giraffe, I wanted to answer. It was on the tip of my tongue. Giraffe.This was in math class,”

“The truth. Really the Truth.”

“I don't know where I am, Evan.""I'm seeing red everywhere. It's just...everywhere.""I am underwater right now. You don't understand. I'm underwater.""I need a gun.""Evan? I need-”

“Let's go into the woods and take some pictures," you said. "I found this old camera.""Let go!" you screamed. "Let go of me!""You have to let go," the counselor told me. "Let go of what you're holding inside."I can touch the picture but it's not your face.I can touch the screen but it's not your face.Let go.”

“Ariel, look at me.Look at me.Look at me.”

“If only you knew, Comedy Boy. If only I could tell you.”

“You and I are walking in the snow. "Why are you walking backwards?" I ask. You point in the direction we came from. "So they'll think that's where I'm going." You point to where we're going. "And that's where I'm from.”

“That's okay," you told me. "I like them better when they're dried up. I'll keep them for years. Until our Get Rid of the Roses anniversary.”

“What did Pandora do with her box after she'd unleashed despair into the world? Did she keep it in her mantel, as a reminder of what she'd done?”

“The train comes. If you stay on the tracks, you die. If you jump off the bridge, you die,There's always a train coming eventually.”

“Lets always love each other, and never be in love with each other."And I agreed.”

“I'm not in love with you.”

“I'll kill myself. I swear, I'll kill myself," you threatened."We're not going to leave you alone," I said.But we had to, eventually.After all, people are always separable.”

“Are you two inseparable now?" I asked you.You laughed. "Don't you know, Evan? People are always separable."I wanted to say I had once thought the two of us were inseparable.But that would have only proven your point.”

“You never told me what you saw in him, not convincingly.”

“It wasn't enough to pass him as we were heading to your house or cutting over to the library. Soon you had to have sightings in the halls too. Then sightings turned to spying, and spying to stalking. You could tell me how many pairs of jeans he owned before you officially knew his name.”

“It's that guy again," you'd say.Then: "He's cute, you know."No, I don't know. And you don't need to tell me.”

“I was treating the past as if it could be mined for clues, for reasons.But the past resists that.It holds too much evidence of too many things.”

“Up or down.We're you in an up or down?”

“Whats up?" he asked.Up, I thought."This," I said, looking down at the photo in my hand.Down, I thought.”

“The way yousaid "I love you"said "I'll never sleep with you"said "I will always"kept a list of all your favorite moments in a composition book and would underline the ones involving me with blue ink”

“Back to the present.I found you in my locker the next morning.Not you.A photograph.But for a moment, it felt like finding a body,It felt like findingwhat you I needed to be found.”

“They said you weren't coming back.I didn't believe them.I wanted to hear it from you.”

“I said I hated life. You said you hated life. We decided to hate it together.”

“Even now, you refused to be pixelated, forgotten, silenced, erased. Not that I wanted to erase you. The opposite. I wanted the opposite.”

“Do they sleep? I want to know...am I the only one who doesn't sleep?”

“I knew I should have call Jack, should have told him...but I didn't. Not yet. I was afraid of him thinking that I was crazy, too. I wasn't sure what he'd do if he saw me drowning. I wasn't sure he'd save me unless he was saving himself. what he'd say.”

“It was your mind. The way you were wired. That was the only thing all the theories had in common. You were manic. You were depressive. You were schizophrenic. You were on drugs. You were on the wrong medication. You needed medication. You heard voices. You'd lost the will to speak. Anxiety. Disorder. Nobody knew for sure, at least nobody who was saying anything. After you left, all the remained were guesses. I would go over everything. Every detail. Every panic. Every sigh. But they never added up to anything but you. I only saw the person. I couldn't see the wiring. I couldn't fix the wiring. I tried I tried I”

“Plus/minusPositive/negative1/0I can/ I can'tI will/ I won'tYou are/You aren'tI said/I thoughtI said "I will"/I thought "I can't"I thought "I can"/I said "You won't”

“You are leaving me messages, but I haven't gotten the message yet.”

“Why do you want to put more smoke inside of you?”

“It felt a littlel less like a game. A trick. A trap. <\STRIKE>”

“Nobody ever took my picture. They didn't want to. Or I wouldn't let them.You were the only exception.”

“That strange, twisted, torn love. That conflict between what your heart knows is right and what your mind is told is right.”

“Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.”

“What did it matter to me? Did I think that by making you rational about one thing, I could make you rational about everything? Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to save you from your fears”

“But death is not freedom. For a moment, it can look like freedom. But then it's death.Anything.Something.Nothing.”

“Maybe relationships could have fractals, too. And maybe the sense of loss was when you're becoming a fractal of what you once were to each other.”

“That's the question, isn't it?" you said one night. "Does death bring freedom, or is it the end of freedom?”

“It's you. You deserve this. There is a reason this is happening to you.”

“Your life is inescapable. Unless you decide to escape it.”

“Every you, every me. Fractals. Fractures.”

“You existed. You existed now as a fractal.Definition:A fractal is generally a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be broken into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.Maybe I was a fractal. Maybe the photographer was a fractal.Maybe we were all fractals.”

“The day it happened, the week after it happened-those were not times I wanted to go back to. How I felt like I was trapped in a chamber of my own noise. Sitting in class and not being there at all. Sitting in a chair and fragmenting at the same time. Clutching to the random facts. Thinking the concept of a fact was itself a fiction. Because we live in a blur. All of us live in a blur.”

“A photograph it a souvenir of a memory.It is not a moment.It is the looking at the photograph that becomes the moment. Your own moment.”