“If Conrad remembered the skinny, frightened girl he'd held for one brief moment on a frigid Boston street corner, he showed no signs of it when we met...Even as I tried to urge hum back against the pillows, he looked at me with wild eyes. "What happened to your leather jacket?" he asked. "Shh," I said, trying to sooth him. "There's no leather jacket." "You were wearing it the first time I saw you," he said, frowning slightly.”

“I do know you.” I’m still crying, swallowing back spasms in my throat,struggling to breathe. This is a nightmare and I will wake up. This is amonster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together,broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, andwhole, and mine again. I find his hands, lace my fingers through his evenas he tries to pull away. “It’s me, Alex. Lena. Your Lena. Remember? Remember37 Brooks, and the blanket we used to keep in the backyard—”“Don’t,” he says. His voice breaks on the word.“And I always beat you in Scrabble,” I say. I have to keep talking, andkeep him here, and make him remember. “Because you always let me win.And remember how we had a picnic one time, and the only thing we couldfind from the store was canned spaghetti and some green beans? And yousaid to mix them—”“Don’t.”“And we did, and it wasn’t bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were sohungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me.”

“He draws a slow circle in the dirt with his toe, the first physical sign of discomfort or distraction he has given since we arrived. In that moment I am in awe of him: Since I've known him he has done nothing but support me and give me comfort and listen to me, and all this time he has been carrying the weight of his own secrets too.”

“I remember Lena's expression when he knocked on the door; and how Alex had looked at her when she finally let him into the storeroom. I remember exactly what he was wearing, too, and the mess of his hair, the sneakers with their blue-tinged laces. His right shoe was untied. He didn't notice.He didn't notice anything but Lena.”

“The first time I saw you, at the Governor, I handn't been to watch the birds at the border in years. But that's what you reminded me of. You were jumping up, and you were yelling something, and your hair was coming loose from your ponytail, and you were so fast..." He shakes his head. "Just a flash, and then you were gone, Exactly like a bird.”

“I'll find you," he says, watching me with the eyes I remember. "I won't let you go again”

“They had to swing by Jared’s locker so he could grab his jacket. “A leather jacket,” Kami said as he shrugged into it. “Aren’t you trying a little too hard to play into certain bad boy clichés?”“Nah,” said Jared. “You’re thinking of black leather. Black leather’s for bad boys. It’s all in the color. You wouldn’t think I was a bad boy if I was wearing a pink leather jacket.”“That’s true,” Kami said. “What I would think of you, I do not know. So what does brown leather mean, then?”“I’m going for manly,” Jared said. “Maybe a little rugged.”“It’s bits of dead cow; don’t ask it to perform miracles.”