“But the guilt goes even deeper than that. It, too, is dust: Layers and layers of it have accumulated. Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all.I told on them.I was jealous.God forgive me, for I have sinned.”

“Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all.I told on them.I was jealous.”

“I can admit, now, that I must have loved Lena. Not in an Unnatural way, but my feelings for her must have been a kind of sickness. How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?”

“He has had to learn to hide it, even more than most of us. Somewhere, I think, there is a center to him. It glows like a coal being slowly crushed into diamond, weighed down by layers and layers of surface.”

“I cry for everything I abandoned and because I, too, have been left behind -- by Alex, by my mom, by time that has cut through our worlds and separated us.”

“I’m Hana,” Hana says. “And this is Lena.” She jabs me with an elbow. Iknow I must look like a fish, standing there with my mouth gaping open, but I’mtoo outraged to speak. He’s lying. I know he’s the one I saw yesterday, would betmy life on it.“Alex. Nice to meet you.” Alex keeps his eyes on me as he and Hana shakehands. Then he extends a hand to me. “Lena,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve neverheard that name before.”

“And even if she isn’t—even if by some miracle, she survived the escape and has been squeezing out a living in the Wilds—she would never join forces with the resisters. She would never be violent or vengeful. Not Lena, who used to practically faint when she pricked a finger, who couldn’t even lie to a teacher about being late. She wouldn’t have the stomach for it.”