“3. The séance was for real and everyone knows it. But they won’t discuss it becauseA. they don’t trust me,B. they don’t like me, orC. they’re playing it down because they’re plotting to get me alone after school, duct tape my mouth, and throw me over the fence so Annaliese can rip out my throat with her ghostly teeth. Okay. Now that’s paranoid.”

“And then I get it. The 318s have somehow decided to make me do the things that are in my notebook. All the things I’m afraid of. The things I’ve been writing since the seventh grade. And if I don’t, they’re going to post the book on the internet, and everyone at school, no, everyone with an internet connection, will know all my secrets. For a second, it feels like my throat swallows up my heart and my breath catches in my throat. There’s only one thing left to do. I put my head in my hands and start to cry.”

“He rose to his feet in one fluid move, the better to look down at me. “You don’t know me, princess.Some people have reasons for doing things, and don’t just go wherever they’re told or drift whicheverway they’re pushed.”

“Yet, in the middle of all this grief, I realize there’s a part of me clinical enough to want to document it. People talk about artists like they’re these sensitive, delicate beings who don’t use the toilet, but I think the real ones are something else. They’re users. They’re mercenaries. They’re hunters. And they don’t let anything – other people, or themselves – get in the way of it.”

“Every moment of our lives we make choices. Most we don’t even know we’re making, they’re so dull or routine or automatic. Some are beyond explanation—like my mom choosing Wyatt’s memory over Dad and me.”

“It feels so separate, like I’ve touched something that’s taken the color out of me. Or maybe I’m in color now and they’re in black and white.”