This time, the sensation that overcame me was not pain. It was something equally uncomfortable, but there was no real discomfort, physical or mental. The best way I could describe it would be my brain getting rearranged—yeah, brain, limbs, all that jazz.

YOU WANT THINGS THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE. WHAT HAS BEEN DONE CANNOT BE REVERSED. IT IS IN THE PAST NOW.

they make me want to tear my eyes out,

Not this time.

I wanted to run, listeners. Running is easy. So is hiding. I should know—Rachel and I both should—as we’ve been doing it our whole lives. It’s so simple to withdraw into the safe, the routine, the familiar; I wasn’t happy in my old life, but it was convenient, and it was all I had ever known—it was easy to stay put out of bitterness or fear. But

I can almost … It’s odd, I can almost feel her presence moving about in the other room.

Back then, it wasn’t us. It was me, and it was her. I’m not sure how to explain it, but there’s an important distinction. I think we’re stronger when we’re us than when we’re me and her.

take a deep breath, thinking it over. The answer is yes. A thousand, million times yes. But I’ve known her longer than she’s known me; there were weeks and weeks when she could talk to me but I couldn’t do the same. I read about something like that in my parents’ psychology books. The name of it eludes me, but one side observes and the other is

not what I—I meant that it’s—yeah, it’s … I—” Lauren smiles and kisses me. I’ve never been kissed before. I don’t know what to do with my hands, but I start by bracing myself up with one and putting the other in my lap, and that dizzy feeling returns, and my stomach feels like it’s being turned inside out, but in the best way, and, in this moment,