Identical

by Ellen Hopkins

Numb Sometimes that seems like a great place to be. Closed off from it all, in no need of love, no need of family.

It’s because they’ve lived entire lifetimes. Loved. Laughed. Surrendered. Stumbled. Weathered, beaten, still they don’t crumble, not even as they inch toward death.

Never accept evil as something you must walk with, something you deserve.

I nod, thinking about going “down,” no last shot at redemption. That will likely be my fate. Done in by some viral villain, sent straight to the fiery pits, shackled by my silence, sentenced to spend eternity locked in a hot red chamber, no way to claim innocence and avoid an eternal dance with the devil.

I stare out over the fog-shrouded valley. The gray gulps me into it, infiltrates my brain. Sad. Will I ever find a way beyond this sad?

Was I saved, or was fate simply too damn busy killing other people that day to catch up to me, too?

I’m in love. And I like how that feels. And I hate how that feels. Because love is an invention of fiction writers.

You are all I’ve ever wanted, and I want you now with all that I am. I don’t mean I want sex with you, although I do want that, too. I want the part of you that you refuse to give.

Is my lunacy on the horizon, or is it already here?

now I understand how love can come alive inside you, beneath your skin, beneath your flesh and bone, a separate entity, breathing in and out its own special air, expanding to fill all those hollow places that you can’t fill by yourself.

Babies aren’t born cruel or filled with sick desire. Evil is not intrinsic. It’s fashioned.

I’m not exactly sold on the idea that love is, in fact, real. Will it find me one day, overtake me, infiltrate my life like sunlight snakes through the cold of morning? Can love thaw me? Will it ever?

“If you’re strong enough to look death in the eye, you’re strong enough to fight him. Please. I don’t want you to die.”