“My heart applauds inside my ears, first like a roaring crowd, then slows and slows until it's a solitary person, clapping with unbridled sarcasm. Clap. Clap.Clap.Well done, Ed.Well given up. ”

“It's my heart that is tired. A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn't feel like this.”

“Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.”

“And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.The hunger.The desire.Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.”

“It's the sound of my breathing that gets me, pouring down into my lungs and then tripping back up my throat.”

“Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?”

“Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.”