“That was the point where she was supposed to sound tough, like she was someone to be reckoned with, like she was the sort of person witches should listen to. Was this really her plan? She sounded like a child.”

“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.”

“...she wore weird baggy clothes and seemed like the sort of person who might tesser in some dark and stormy night.”

“Hazel knew her mother really meant I hope there is something you were dying to do at school today, that you are learning to love it there, and if you are not learning to love it there, can you please try harder? Because her mom seemed to think it was the sort of thing Hazel could choose to do, like she could choose to understand the rules when they weren’t even written in her language, like she could choose to make herself fit when she was so clearly shaped all wrong.”

“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.”

“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.”

“She hated this place. Nothing made sense. Nothing worked as it was supposed to. She was supposed to be learning things as she went along, gaining strength for her final battle. All she was doing was losing things, one thing at a time.”