“Sunday night, I reread The Catcher in the Rye until I felt tired enough to fall asleep. Only I never got tired enough. And I couldn't read, because reading didn't feel the same.”

“A little known fact: I read all the time. books were the one thing that got me out of Gatlin, even if it was only for a little while.”

“I said it, just like that. No stupid jokes, no changing the subject. For once, I wasn't embarrassed, because it was the truth. I had fallen. I think I had always been falling. And she might as well know, if she didn't already, because there was no going back now. Not for me.”

“A little-known fact about me: I read all the time.”

“They shouldn't call death passing on. They should call it leveling up. Because the game only got harder once I lost. And I was more than a little worried it had only just begun.”

“What are you thinking?She smiled.I think you can figure it out. You can read the writing on the wall.And as she said it, there was writing on the wall. It appeared slowly, one word at a time.You'renottheonlyonefalling.It wrote itself out, in the same curling black script as the rest of the room. Lena's cheeks flushed a little, and she covered her face with her hands. "It's going to be really embarrassing if everything I think starts showing up on the walls.""You didn't mean to do that?""No."You don't need to be embarrassed, L.I pulled her hands away.Because I feel the same way about you.”

“Every day was like a day out of someone else's life. Nothing had ever happened to me, and now everything was happening to me -- and by everything, I really meant Lena. An hour was both faster and slower. I felt like I had sucked the air out of a giant balloon, like my brain wasn't getting enough oxygen. Clouds were more interesting, the lunchroom less disgusting, music sounded better, the same old jokes were funnier, and Jackson went from being a clump of grayish-green industrial buildings to a map of times and places where I might run into her. I found myself smiling for no reason, keeping my earphones in and replaying our conversations in my head, just so I could listen to them again. I had seen this kind of thing before. I had just never felt it.”