We laughed as we ducked behind a pile of snow. Then our brothers came charging through the barrier, sending the four of us sliding down a white slope full of cherished memories.

She had feared the worst, and even though at that very moment she would have liked to wring her neck, she was happy to learn that suicide was not one of the stupid things that Eve had in her repertoire. Suicide made no sense: situations change, people change, and the problems of today may find a solution tomorrow. So long as you’re in the game you can change the final score, but if you take yourself out of it, you’ll never know how it might have ended, and you let the world win.

Yes,” I whisper so the others won’t hear, “but being afraid is good because it means I still have more to lose.

We were both filled with the enthusiasm that comes from being with someone you automatically click with.

I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.

I had always heard rumors of her, Nanook thought, she who can control the wind, the water, the earth, and fire ... She who can talk to time. But those were old myths of a woman who lived many thousands of years ago, the first daughter of the Earth. There is a prophecy that she will return again, during the end times -- every religion has someone like that, someone to wait for and put your faith in, but my culture had mostly covered up her existence. We had a god of the sea, a god of the land, a god of the air, a god of fire, but no one who could control all of the elements. We spoke, only in whispers, of the ancient bloodline -- the descendents of the Great Mother. Too many superstitious minds, too many men concerned only with their own power and position, had heard these whispers in the past and taken gruesome steps to erase the descendents. The lineage was said to be broken, the blood of the Great Mother spilled for the last time.

If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me.All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.

With every step, I cursed the person who had ever invented the saying: “Speak of the devil”. Clearly, they had no sympathy for me!

Her heart was telling her to trust him, but it wouldn’t be the first time that that foolish muscle, there in the middle of her chest, had betrayed her.

Say it again,” he says.“That whole drawn-out speech?” I remember something about a solar system, but I’m too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.He steps closer. “No. The part about you fallin’ for me.