Pandemonium (Delirium, #2)

by Lauren Oliver

That is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.

“I never figured out why the book was banned,” Julian says after a bit. “That part must have come later, after the witch, and the shoes. I’ve been wondering about it ever since. Funny how certain things stay with you.”

I didn’t realize then what a privilege that was: to be bored with your best friend; to have time to waste. Halfway

I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other’s wounds; they repair the broken skin.

That was a half a year and a lifetime ago. For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried.

Instinctively, I push him behind me, toward the door, and wrestle the handgun from my backpack.

Suddenly I could cry. I want to reach over and grab his hand. I want to tell him it’s okay, and feel the softness of his seashell ear against my lips. I want to curl up against him, as I would have done with Alex, and let myself breathe in his warm skin.

This is not why I came to the Wilds, why Alex wanted me to come: not to turn my back and bury the people I care about, and build myself hard and careless on top of their bodies, as Raven does. That is what the Zombies do. But not me. I have let too many things decay. I have given up on enough.

Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.

need him to know that I came for him. I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him. Please.

Julian pulls away to look at me. He traces my jaw with one finger. “I think—I think you’ve given it to me,” he says, slightly out of breath. “The deliria.” “Love,” I say, and squeeze his waist. “Say it.” He hesitates for just a second. “Love,” he says, testing the word. Then he smiles. “I think I like it.”