“Hal frowned. "Are you sure this is a good idea?""Uh, live in a tropical paradise for a week and sip fruity drinks with umbrellas in them by the pool? Yeah, Hal," I said, cranking up the sarcasm far past eleven, "that's a fate worse than death. I don't know what I was thinking.""No," he said, stretching the word out longer than was healthy for it, "I was thinking more like going on a honeymoon without a wife."I dropped a sock and looked up at him, stung. "Don't rub it in, man.”

“I want to tell you,' the voice on the phone said. 'My head is filled with things to say.'...'I don't mind,' Hal said softly. 'I could wait forever.''That's what you think,' the voice said. The connection was cut.”

“...when I came back, I found Mom sobbing at the kitchen table...Then I asked her what had happened.'Nothing,'she said. 'I was thinking about that man...I started thinking about...if he and his wife and their other child are okay, and I don't know. It just got to me.''I know,' I said, because I did know. Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love.”

“He blocked me. " What'd you do, Chloe?"I sidestepped. He sidesteped."You like him, don't you?" he said. "Yes, I like him. Just not...""Not what?""Talk to Simon. He's the one who thinks...""Thinks what?"Step. Block."Thinks what?""That there's someone else," I blurted before I could stop myself. I took a deep, shuddering breath. "He thinks there's someone else.""Who?"I was going to say I don't know. Some guy from school, I guess. But Derek's expression already knew the answer. The look on his face...It'd been humiliating before, having Simon accuse me of liking Derek, but that was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw Derek's look. Not just surprise, but shock. Shock and horror."Me?" he said. "Simon said he thinks you and I are-" "No, not that. He knows we aren't-""Good. So what does he think?""That I like you." Again, the words flew out before I could stop them.”

“So once the zookeeper realized it was the monkeys who stole the bananas, he knew there was only one way he'd be able to get them back.""How?" I whispered. My throat was so sore."Don't talk. He had to beat them in shuffleboard, of course.""What?""I said don't talk. Monkeys love shuffleboard."He used a page from a homework assignment he'd failed and a stack of quarters to make a shuffleboard court. I watched the monkeys and the zookeepers have their showdown while I sipped the last of my applejuice."Need more?" Graham asked me without looking up, when my straw skidded against the dry bottom of the box."Uh uh.""You're supposed to drink juice.""I just drank some.""More, though."I shook my head."Drink more juice or the monkeys are going to kill you. The only thing they love more than shuffleboard is beating up dehydrated sick boys.”

“Why does he speak of them that way?" The crow-man wanted to know. "They are humans, just like he is.""I don't think he sees them as just like him." Ally explained."He is foolish then," said Nawat. "There are more raka than Bronaus.”