Megan Miranda

“If you pretend something hard enough, could it become real?”

“My mother hid the knife block.”

“I thought that this must be what purgatory was like. Can't go forward. Can't go back. Awaiting some official judgment.”

“I knew how I was supposed to feel when I was with him. Well, I knew what I was not supposed to feel. I wasn't supposed to feel anxious. Not tense, either. Or maybe I was. Maybe this was normal. I didn't know. So I let him whisper in my ear and put his hands on my hips. And I listened to him list the ways in which I was slowly killing him. None of which turned out to be the actual way that I killed him.”

“And then I started laughing. Horrible, really. But I was laughing. Because of all the things they could say about me, equal parts horrible and true, this was so far from the mark it was funny.”

“I hated that I felt jealous. Hated it. It's not like I'd been on my own waiting for him, just like he hadn't been waiting alone for me. We had lived, for two years. Made choices and mistakes, had good days and bad days.”

“I wasn't sure who I was most scared of at the moment. The stranger I was learning about too quickly, or the woman I'd known my entire life that was quickly becoming a stranger.”

“Funny hoe everything can change in an instant. From death to life. From empty to full. From darkness to light. Or maybe I just wasn't looking. I hadn't known that light could be a feeling and sound could be a color and a kiss could be both a question and an answer. And that heaven could be the ocean or a person or this moment or something else entirely.”

“The first time I died, I didn't see God. No light at the end of the tunnel. No haloed angels. No dead grandparents. To be fair, I probably wasn't a solid shoo-in for Heaven. But, honestly, I kind of assumed I'd make the cut.”

“When I went from feeling nothing to everything and couldn't stop screaming because it turned out the everything was blinding pain.”

“That hell can be temporary. That there's a way out.”

“I wasn't athletic and had no desire to work out, so I watched what I ate. Correction: I ate what I wanted and felt guilty about it later.”

“We were in a pit. Fitting. This was, after all, my hell. This pit around the lake. The lake that had taken so much. My friendship with Decker. My humanity. Quite nearly my life. And I was so angry with it. I wasn't scared anymore. I was furious.”

“Truth is, I don't know. I don't know... what I'm doing. Or why I'm doing it," he said. Which was the worst excuse in the history of excuses. "I don't know what's up or down anymore. I feel like I'm..." He stopped speaking and winced."Drowning," I said. "You were going to say you feel like you're drowning."He nodded. I wonder how many people I took with me when I feel into the lake. How many sunk with me. I thought I had been alone under the water, but maybe I wasn't.”

“A cut. That's what I felt. Words can cut, slice, like a razor.”

“I leaned against my door, struggling to catch my breath, and thought that maybe hell wasn't a place at all, but a thing. A contagious thing. A thing that could creep up the steps, seep through the crack under my door, grow horns and sprout fire - smelling faintly like sulfur. A thing that could sink its tendrils inside and take root, coloring everything gray and distorting a smile into a sneer. And while i got dressed for the play, swatted at my back and kept running my hands over my stomach because I could feel it, I swear, I could feel it reaching for me, trying to grab hold.”

“Decker went to Greece a few summers ago and showed me pictures from his trip. "Aren't these awesome?" he had said, pointing out photographs of the ancient ruins."Awesome" I agreed, but I felt dizzy. The ruins were just a reminder that what had been was no longer. That everything we are will be gone someday. That I will be forgotten.”

“I think...I think its always been you who was dying,"- Delaney”

“If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”

“I hoped he'd take his dog and drive down to the ocean. I hoped there was still time. I pictured him sitting on the gray rocks with the waves crashing and spraying white foam. Maybe he'd hear something in the roar of the ocean, feel some limitless power, believe that there's something greater. Something more. Maybe his heaven was at the coast, with a dog's head in his lap, with nothing but water and depth from there to the horizon." -Delaney”

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" he said.I placed my hands flat on the table and leaned across it. "Stay the hell away from him.""Who? Oh, you mean the guy who's gonna bite it soon?" "He's not. He's going to be fine."He reached a hand out and placed it over my own. I snatched my hand back. He shook his head at me and whispered, "You can't stop it.""Watch me.”

“My brain scrambled to make room for the existene of these people. Grandparents I'd never known. They went from hypothetical, empty memories to blurry, unformed shapes in my head. Dead one second, alive the next.Kind of like me.”

“Alot can happen in eleven minutes. Decker can run two miles in eleven minutes. I once wrote an English essay in ten. And God knows Carson Levine can talk a girl out of her clothes in less then half that time.Eleven minutes might as well be eternity underwater. It only takes three minutes without air for loss consciousness. Permanent brain damange begins at four minutes. And then, when the oxygen runs out, full cardiac arrest occurs. Death is possible at five minutes. Probable at seven. Definite at ten.Decker pulled me out at eleven.”

“I hadn't known that a light could be a feeling and a sound could be a color and a kiss could be both a question and an answer. And that heaven could be the ocean or a person or this moment or something else entirely.”