Take a match and hold it to the strip, start the strike. Somewhere at the microscopic level there are whole worlds of hot light that gather and jump to the match tip. That’s what we were.

Everyone’s always ‘just joking,’ right? Except when they’re not.

Years already I’d been trying to understand what was inside me, while the rest of the world was trying it to tear it out.

Whenever I’ve made a choice in my life, a real choice... I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.

If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can’t avoid; there are gods that we pray to and gods that prey on us; there are dreams that become gods and nightmares that do, as well.

Always, always boys. Whole classes, boys shaped like teddy beats or tree lizards. Always first to pull out their opinions, shove their knowledge at each other. I guess there's many ways engineering could feel but mostly it felt like any place feels where there's twenty boys and three girls. I had to go in with my back like a rod. Be the baddest both is what I said, in my head. And then did.

Phillip with his raging boner for the sound of his own voice, always the first to pipe up with the proposed solution.

You probably just finished shitting anyway," Kaui says. She hands him the thermos, "was it a soft serve morning or more like a German sausage?

But I'm in the water, too, I wanted to say. And there are plenty eyes on you. No one's watching to see if I stay afloat.

She never said shit like this to the boys, only to me. Like I was supposed to guilty of ambition while they were just living their full potential.