“I liked that he had hair that was growing without a plan. A grin that came out of nowhere and left the same way.”

“Do you ever hear from yourdad?’ I ask.‘Uh-uh. Mum said they had the biggestfight before he left. She was sixteen and telling him about me and he left a dad shaped hole in the wall.”

“I kept thinking I wouldn't make it to Friday night. That something would happen before then to mess with my luck, something like a nuclear bomb going off so there was nowhere for us to meet."Pretty harsh," Leo said when I called him to come get me because she'd left me in the gutter with a broken nose. She never even called to check she hadn't killed me. A date like that makes a guy wish they would drop the bomb. Right over his house.”

“I asked him what it was like to have a dad. He said he didn't think it mattered who you had as long as you had somebody good.”

“People keep calling it an accident. That snake bit me on purpose. I've named it Sneaky. Sneaky had it all planned. I saw its face.”

“Every time he looked at me I felt like I'd touched my tongue to the tip of a battery. In art class I'd watch him lean back and listen and I was nothing but zing and tingle. After a while, the tingle turned to electricity, and when he asked me out my whole body amped to a level where technically I should have been dead. I had nothing in common with a sheddy like him, but a girl doesn't think straight when she's that close to electrocution.”

“I escaped onto the wall, a painted ghost trapped in a jar. I stood back to look at it and I knew the sad thing wasn't that the ghost was running out of air. the sad thing was that he had enough air in that small space to last him a lifetime. What were you thinking, little ghost? Letting yourself get trapped like that?”