“In a moment like this, there were so many beautiful and uncommon things worth saying. Aidan would have said them all, stealing this spectacle from the men who'd paid for it, making it her own.”

“I rushed off to Whitehall and assumed Aidan would head back to Astor. But when I turned around briefly, I saw Aidan uncoiling her black scarf from around her neck. She held each end of the scarf above her head, the silk capturing the wind, arching above her like a parachute. Aidan released one end, kiting the scarf. The wind swirled around her for a moment before Aidan let go completely. She was an excellent student. The light silk caught a thermal and rose, sailing above the water. A dark black bird against the blue sky.”

“Don't you miss it?" I'd ask Aidan. "All that Hollywood sunshine?""It's like hating the color yellow," she'd say, "and living in a golden age.”

“I'd like to be a light meter.""A what?""A light meter. Like a photographer uses. Tinks had one this morning." Aidan snapped an imaginary photo of me. "I'd like to be able to measure and know for certain whether people were giving off light or taking light away.""You're strange," I said. "But I think I like that about you.”

“It wasn't that Ginger had messed me up. I realized that most guys would have been grateful. But she had taken some not small thing from me. Nadia was fifteen and she wanted to have sex. I wanted to do her this favor. Hoped that I wouldn't mess her up for life. We were all pretending we knew what we wanted to do with our bodies.”

“Aidan had compared Bellingham to the Island of Misfit Toys, a sanctuary for the unwanted. But the problem, as I saw it, was that putting this many defective kids together only created more trouble.”

“I don't know why I said what I did. Maybe I wanted Hannah to remember something, or maybe I wanted to test her, but when she asked me my name I didn't even pause. "My name is Aidan," I said. "It means fire.”