Love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” I blurt out, and all three girls instantly shut their mouths and stare at me. “It’s true,” I say, feeling bolder now that I have such a captive audience.

You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

Once you let in the word, once you allow it to take root, it will spread like a mold through all of your corners and dark spaces— and with it, the questions, the shivery, splintered fears, enough to keep you permanently awake.