“Something in me, in my bruised heart, wakes up, and even though I'm terrified, I don't push the feeling away.”

“I want to care, but I don't. I look at you and all I feel is tired. I walk through school and all I want to do is leave. I wake up in the morning and don't know why I'm here. I feel like I'm not real.”

“I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine.I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever. ”

“I deserved the shaking and the headaches and the fact that every single time I took a breath I felt a squeezing in my chest, my heart beating even though I wished it wasn't.”

“Friends. Strange indeed. There's just so much at risk, including my heart and mental stability - which are both still extremely fragile. I'm getting better but my heart still aches for you. I'm also having a hard time dealing with the fear. I don't want to be sad anymore. I don't want to cry, worry, or be scared anymore. I just wish I could feel free and happy again. If I can't talk to you at all, it's unbearable. If I talk to you too much, it's unbearable. It doesn't leave much. I want us both to be happy. I just want everything to be okay for you and me. I don't want anyone else to hurt. I feel like I've hurt enough for everyone. I've cried enough tears to fill everyone's bucket.”

“Whatever happened to me just now has gotten to me, broken past the fragile shell I've built. More than my memory is gone. My soul has wings that beat to a heart I don't understand and I see things, feel things that I know aren't from here, but that are so real.”

“He's looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain.”