“The halls were empty. Charlotte had missed the first bell and would be late, again. Her homeroom teacher would ask her for an excuse and she would say, 'Overwhelming feeling of dread.' That was going to go over nicely.”

“This morning, as Charlotte approached the brick facade of Hartnett, she found herself overcome with a great sense of dread. It hit her with a strange and sudden force, and she had an overwhelming urge to turn back, get into bed and not go out for about three weeks. She stopped in her tracks. The feeling itself was alarming to Charlotte - was she sensing something? Something dangerous? And was it something supernatural or just middle school? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.”

“But if you were Charlotte, and you had been feeling that life was some cosmic joke that had no punchline, and in the space of a moment you had gone from being Charlotte-without-a-kitten to being Charlotte-with-a-kitten, you too would have found it nothing short of remarkable.”

“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.”

“A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.”

“But I can tell you this,” he continued. “The white witch doesn’t feel things the way we do, do you understand? She’s all ice. That is her whole point.” A palace of ice and a heart to match. “I don’t understand. Why would people go looking for her? Why would they want to go with her?” Ben sat back. He looked at Hazel searchingly, sadly. His shoulders rose and fell. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “it seems like it would be easier to give yourself to the ice.”

“She could have taken root. She wanted to be a Rose, somebody’s Rose, their Rose—and she would have been company for the flowers. She had new memories to give them, new people to tell them of, people who would help tend to them and keep them. But they warned her. They saved her. Hazel was nobody’s Rose. For better or for worse.”