“The more I learned about the world I thought I knew and all the ones I didn't, the more everything threaded together, leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”

“I didn't want to choose one world. I wanted to be part of both. I didn't want to see only one side of the sky. I wanted to see it all.”

“I needed to know what thread to pull. I needed to be the one who knew the right direction. She couldn't see her way clear of where she was right now, so it had to be me.”

“Even when I didn't know anything else about where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. You were my Wayward, even then. Everything always brought me back to you. Everything.”

“So why did I think about her every second? Why was I so much happier the minute I saw her? I felt like maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn't know, and I didn't have any way to find out.Guys don't talk about stuff like that. We just lie under the pile of bricks.”

“What we had went so much deeper than a kiss. When we were together, she turned me completely inside out. It didn't matter if we were dead or alive. We could never be kept apart. There were some things more powerful than worlds or universes. She was my world, as much as I was hers. What we had, we knew. The poems are all wrong. It's a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper. And sometimes gold can stay. Anybody who's ever been in love can tell you that.”

“I stared at the creased map on my wall, the thin green lineconnecting all the places I had read about. There they were, all thecities of my imaginary future, held together with tape and marker andpins. In six months, a lot had changed. There was no thin green linethat could lead me to my future anymore. Just a girl.”