“She wore too much eyeliner then, at age thirteen, and now, at eighteen, she wears so much black under her eyes, she looks like a slutty linebacker raccoon.”

“She looked into space a lot, didn't say much, and kissed my father when midnight came, as if she were punching a time card.”

“What Vera doesn’t know is: I’d kill to be a pickle on her Big Mac—ground to relish between her perfect white teeth.I’d kill to be a bug she squishes with her holey Army-issue combat boot.But she’s too good for me. She always was.”

“I never asked her how she was, because I didn't really think about how she was. I just thought about what she thought of me.”

“That Sindy. She was so damn smart. But I never told her that. I also never told her that I loved her, or that I loved the two little stretch marks she got from carrying Vera. Or that I loved that freckle on her forehead. I never told her that I loved her lasagna or that I thought her views on politics were clever. I just kept my mouth shut because I thought that made me safe.”

“I get the urge to feel it, too, so when she takes her hand away, I turn her toward me and I feel the edges of New Jersey. I kiss Hoboken and Atlantic City. I kiss Newark and Trenton. I kiss Camden, and then I follow the road west, over the Walt Whitman Bridge into Pennsylvania. And I kiss home.”

“You two would make a cute couple,” she says as she passes by with a full dough tray in her arms. I don’t know why she says it. We aren’t doing anything but folding boxes with the other drivers and telling dirty jokes.But we would.We would make a cute couple.”