No one ever told me that it might be different. That it would be okay to be different.

And I think being friends with someone should be like the concept of infinity – like you truly believe that person has no limits, and you just want to keep counting upward with them to see where they go.

Hannah holds the rose up to her face, but she can’t smell anything. ‘Awesome,’ she says, the word scraping up from some hollow place inside her stomach.

Love ultimately wins, Hannah. Love ultimately saves.

I think saying what you’re afraid of makes you brave.

I hate you,” I say. Then I kiss her and kiss her and kiss her.

Our fingers brush and I feel the electricity on our skin, radiant enough to power this street full of lights.

I can tell you that I believe – that the human heart’s mysterious ability to love others is never wrong. Your heart will never ask your permission to love. It’s going to love whomever it was made to love, and the best thing you can do is follow it.

Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.

They ride over pebbles and patches of dusk-colored sunlight, underneath the spread arms of the live oaks and the promise of their green leaves, past houses full of people and rules and prayers and magic. Hannah looks at Baker, and Baker extends her hand outward into the space between them, holding it palm-up for Hannah to take, right there in the heart of the garden.