“When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms.
I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay.
And until then: I run.”
― Pandemonium
I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay.
And until then: I run.”
― Pandemonium
“The only thing worse than having no friends is being pitied for having no friends.”
― Pandemonium
― Pandemonium
“There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next.”
― Pandemonium
― Pandemonium
“In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.”
― Pandemonium
― Pandemonium
“Promise me we'll stay together, okay?" His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transparent pool. They are eyes to swim in, to float in, forever. "You and me."
"I promise," I say.
Behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her."
The whole world closes around me, like an eyelid: For a moment, everything goes dark.
I am falling. My ears are full of rushing; I have been sucked into a tunnel, a place of pleasure and chaos. My head is about to explode.
He looks different. He is much thinner, and a scar runs from his eyebrow all the way down to his jaw. On his neck, just behind his left ear, a small tattooed number curves around the three-pronged scar that fooled me, for so long, into believing he was cured. His eyes-once a sweet, melted brown, like syrup-have hardened. Now they are stony, impenetrable.
Only his hair is the same: that auburn crown, like leaves in autumn.
Impossible. I close my eyes and reopen them: the boy from a dream, from a different lifetime. A boy brought back from the dead.
Alex.”
― Pandemonium
"I promise," I say.
Behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her."
The whole world closes around me, like an eyelid: For a moment, everything goes dark.
I am falling. My ears are full of rushing; I have been sucked into a tunnel, a place of pleasure and chaos. My head is about to explode.
He looks different. He is much thinner, and a scar runs from his eyebrow all the way down to his jaw. On his neck, just behind his left ear, a small tattooed number curves around the three-pronged scar that fooled me, for so long, into believing he was cured. His eyes-once a sweet, melted brown, like syrup-have hardened. Now they are stony, impenetrable.
Only his hair is the same: that auburn crown, like leaves in autumn.
Impossible. I close my eyes and reopen them: the boy from a dream, from a different lifetime. A boy brought back from the dead.
Alex.”
― Pandemonium
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