Rooms

by Lauren Oliver

It was unfair that people could pretend to be one thing when they were really something else. That they would get you on their side and then do nothing but fail, and fail, and fail again. People should come with warnings, like cigarette packs: involvement would kill you over time.

This is how we grow: not up, but out, like trees—swelling to encompass all these stories, the promises and lies and bribes and habits.