“The sun flitered in through the small, dirty windows, catches his eyes. They are brown, ordinary, but the way he looks at me—no one has ever looked at me like he does. He looks at me like he sees something. Someone.Me."All right," he says, and puts his hands behind his head."Go ahead.”

“I followed the sensation,thinking of Lend. What it felt like to hold his hand. Watching him draw.Those precious times when he got to be nothing but himself around me. The way he laughed. The look he got in his eyes when he was about to say something he knew was clever. The way he looked at while I talked, like I was all he had ever wanted in the entire world.”

“His head was on one side, listening to me, and that was such sweeness to me, that he listened intently. No one, it seemed, has ever listened like he does.”

“He shrugged, looking right into my eyes. "Right now, this is all I feel." He held our intertwined hands up for me to see and I wanted to look away, but I couldn't break the hold his gaze had on me, like he could see more than anyone else saw. Things I couldn't see myself.”

“I remember seeing one elderly man look at us, and he held his hand out, and most frightening were his eyes, dark as a soulless abyss, so black that it looked as if it had been blasted from a cyclone. I felt he was looking right at me. For a moment, I thought I was looking through his sockets, past his brain and behind him; as the tears started rolling down my cheeks a godless universe was expanding within me. Then I became hysterical.”

“I let my head fall forward into his shoulder, breathing in his scent. "Now what do we do?"He's quiet for a while and I finally lean back to look him in the eyes. He appears conflicted by something and then he sets me down on the ground, lacing his fingers through mine."Should we see where the wind takes us?" he asks.I stare at my hand in his and then look up at him. "That sounds good to me.”