Release

by Patrick Ness

“I’m not finished. When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead, then Jesus, Ange, the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, one that was my own, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving.

“I’m always gay?” “In every universe.” “That makes sense. Are you always short?” “Except in the universes where I’m Beyoncé.” “In some universes, we’re all Beyoncé.”