“Not according to this," Jazz said, taking the report. "No evidence of sexual activity or anything like it.""Well, there's that," Howie said, sounding relieved. Jazz wondered at that - was it really so much better to be unmolested, but still murdered in a horrible fashion? To die in pain and terror, stripped, left in a field, your fingers cut off? But as long as you weren't raped, well, that was alright, then? Did it really matter at that point?”

“In a conversation with the master jazz musician and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Wynton Marsalis, he told me, “You need to have some restrictions in jazz. Anyone can improvise with no restrictions, but that’s not jazz. Jazz always has some restrictions. Otherwise it might sound like noise.” The ability to improvise, he said, comes from fundamental knowledge, and this knowledge “limits the choices you can make and will make”

“Hey, if you'd wanted to avoid 'this,' you shouldn't have lured me last night. Now it's too late. You might as well avoid the long, drawn-out pain and get it over with quickly. Sort of like taking off a Band-Aid. Or cutting off a limb.""Wow, who says there's no romance left in the world?”

“And that point is, it doesn't matter how long you've known somebody. People change. Or you don't really know them as well as you thought you did in the first place.”

“A few minutes after discovering we had a goal but no plan, Brent was laughing heartily at a pathetic joke I had made. It reminded me of the firstday on campus when I had thought his laughter sounded like a melody. It did now, even more so. It was music, beautiful, in a manly way, like asensual, slow jazz. I loved jazz.“Jazz, huh?” Brent asked, his voice suddenly husky.“Uh . . . what?”“My laugh reminds you of jazz? Is there anything about me you don’t find attractive?” He rubbed his hand over his lips trying to cover his smirk.“So tell me, how much do you love jazz?”I’m sure my face was pinker than the inside of a watermelon. “I didn’t say any of that.”“You didn’t have to say it, Yara, I could hear it.” Brent tapped the side of his head. “I can hear your thoughts.”“You’re not serious.”“Oh, but I am,” he said, completely straight-faced.”

“Well, all my friends are gone,' Seth said. 'But they did all gang up and murder me. True friends don't really do that.”