“She didn’t know the answer. But there had to be a way. There was always a way.”

“She came in thinking she would rescue him, like some sort of story, like a little kid pretending to be a brave knight. He needed saving; therefore, she would save him. This was the way it used to work. It used to always be so simple, it was just the two of them and they could make shacks into palaces. But things change.”

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack who got lost in the woods. His best friend went after him. Along the way, she had many adventures. She met woodsmen, witches, and wolves. She found her friend in the thrall of a queen who lived in a palace of ice and had a heart to match. She rescued him with the help of a magical object. And they returned home, together, and they lived on, somehow, ever after. It went something like that, anyway.”

“She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way.”

“Hazel should have done something—left a note, pretended she was going to go visit Jack’s aunt Bernice. Something. She was so busy thinking about the one she needed to rescue she didn’t think at all about the one she was leaving behind. She was supposed to take care of her mother, too. She was not supposed to be sipping honey tea with people who are just like the parents you think you are supposed to have. Her mother was what she had.”

“There were so many Jacks she had known, and he had known so many Hazels. And maybe she wasn't going to be able to know all the Jacks that there would be. But all the Hazels that ever would be would have Jack in them, somewhere.”

“Hazel wanted to ask him what he was thinking, what he was feeling, if he was regretting the witch or was just too tired to think, if he was embarrassed that the princess had rescued the knight or if he didn’t mind so much now that it had happened, if he remembered everything that had passed, if he was mad at himself for going with the witch, if his warm blood was winning the battle against the water in his veins; she wanted to reach out and grab the things in his mind and heart and hold them so they could examine them together, but they were not hers to take.”