Leila Sales

“I glared at him. “You came all the way to Essex just to spy on us?”“Yeah.” He smirked. “I crossed the street. It was really rough.”

“Because before the time when you're heartbroken, you get to be in love, and that's worth it.”

“Nobody is so busy that they can't make time for the people they really care about.”

“I've spent most of my life perfecting the craft of living history. I have no practice at living in the present.”

“. . . and even the worst ice cream is better than no ice cream.”

“Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”

“What do you think, Elizabeth?" Dad turned to me."Um, my name's still Chelsea. Remember, you named me that yourself? When I was born?”

“You were listening to some strangers when you could have benn listening to me talk about myself? Chelsea, how could you?”

“The next time some desperate parents beg me to take care of their children," I raged, sawing at my slice of chicken breast, "I will ask them for a full accounting of all the boxes of cereal in their pantry. And if they don't have at least three types of sugary cereal, then I will say no. No, I will not babysit for your whiny children in your cereal-deprived sham of a household.”

“Look, the light turns yellow before it turns red, so if you see a yellow light, you might want to consider slowing the hell down.”

“If you can swing it, getting arrested is the high point of the Fourth of July. Also, the reading of the Declaration of Independence is exciting. (Yes, the Declaration was written two years after Essex is officially set. No, this doesn't stop us.) […] Essex stayed open late that night, for the holiday. Our patriotism cannot be constrained by an eight-hour workday.”

“Sometimes you get everything you ever wanted, only it doesn't look like what you wanted anymore.”

“That waitress was flirting with me," Dad announced once we were out of the restaurant. He said it in his "whispering voice," which meant it was still loud enough for the waitress, all of her coworkers, and the shoppers at every other store in the mall to overhear."Ew," I said. "She was not."Dad chuckled with delight over how hot and eligible he imagined himself to be. "She kept coming over to 'try to collect my plate'...""Because that is her job," I reminded him."And the way she looked at your mother? Pure jealousy!" Dad slipped his arm around Mom's waist. "Poor thing. I left her a big tip.”

“If Dan had ever wanted anything more, then I had killed that by ignoring him at Abbott's. That had been my one chance to confront him not as warring reenactors, but as two people, a girl and a boy, and I had killed it. I am the Charles Manson of relationships.”

“What do you mean, 'what happened to my Redcoat boy'?" Fiona asked, swirling her spoon around her dish."I mean, where did he go?""He went..." Fiona gazed off into the distance and shook her head slightly." He went the way of all things.""You mean he died?"Her focus snapped back to me. "No.""Well, you made it sound like he died.""I just meant that he went wherever it is that boys go when they go." She waved a hand. "Into the ether. Into the great beyond.""It's still sounding like he died. Did you at least get his number?”

“Don't take this as a compliment, but you actually don't smell that bad."Dan let out a burst of surprised laughter. "What did you expect me to smell like?""Well..." I wrinkled my nose. "I heard you guys soak your uniforms in urine.""So you assumed I'd smell like pee.""Yes," I said. "But you don't," I added kindly.”

“Also, he was kind of cute. Not really, of course, since he was the enemy, and the enemy cannot possibly be cute. He was only cute enough to make me wish I could free my hands so that I could fix my hair. I mean, fix my hair, then punch him in the face, and then run.”

“United we stand, divided we fallJust watch us as we beat ya’ll.You say ‘brother against brother’?Well, my brother screwed your motherAnd she liked it!We’ll kick your shins and break your knee’Cause all you got is Robert E. Lee.Farbs!”

“We shouldn't be doing this." Dan broke the silence, his voice low. "We would both get in trouble." He stood up. "Let's go back.""We shouldn't be doing what?" I scrambled to my feet. "What exactly are we doing?""This.""You mean consorting?""Sure, consorting. Cavorting. Carousing." He paused to take a deep breath."Kissing." Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.”

“When you die, you just die. No ghost, no reincarnation, no heaven. People want to believe that their souls live on or whatever, but that's only because they can't handle the idea of the world going on without them.”

“What really happened doesn't matter. What matters is how we agree to remember it.”

“If there's one common thread throughout all of history, it's that people have always fallen for the wrong people.”

“I think love without heartbreak is a myth. A pretty myth, but the kind of myth that ultimately makes us feel worse about ourselves because we're somehow not able to make it come true.”

“I could not figure out what they were doing in an ice cream shop, since they couldn't possible eat calories. I imagined they just fed off the misery of less cool people.”

“This is who Ezra is dating now. He is now into girls who are into dressing up as nineteenth century prostitutes. For the hats.”

“Don't get me wrong, I love my parents and all. But my father and I have the sort of loving relationship in which, whenever he says more than one sentence in a a row to me, I want to stab myself in the heart with a a recently formed silver knife.”

“So it seems like all of history is concurrent. Its not a linear series of events. Its all happening simultaneously. There is one moment, and that moment is now, and we are always present in it.So Im not reenacting history so much as just living every time at once.”

“Vanilla and vanilla bean are two different flavors, and vanilla bean is a much more intense experience”

“Those are pretty much the only questions people ask Colonials. If they want you to tell them anything else, just make it up. They will believe you, because you are wearing a costume.”

“What can I say, I have a thing for guys in period dress, okay? That's just who I am.”

“Fiona says that I have trouble moving on. That I cling to the past...I knew that I would miss it. I'd miss the way my life used to be when I worked there. I always miss the way my life used to be, and the best way to prevent that is to not change my life very much.”

“A boy once told me that love without heartbreak is just a pretty myth.”

“Well, you can't have heartbreak without love," Dan pointed out. "If your heart was really broken, then at least you know you really loved him.”

“You will learn to love again”