Release

by Patrick Ness

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.

He was a nerd, like Renee and Karen said, but nerdiness—like a big nose, like a belly—was never any barrier to cuteness.