“Note to self: buy some nunchucks or something.”

“You’re not . . . normal, Clara. You try to pretend you are. But you’re not. You talked to a grizzly bear, and it obeyed you. Birds follow you like a Disney cartoon, or haven’t you noticed? And for a while after you came back from Idaho Falls, Wendy thought you were on the run from someone or something. You’re good at everything you try. You ride a horse like you were born in the saddle, you ski perfect parallel turns your first time on the hill, you apparently speak fluent French and Korean and who knows what else. Yesterday I noticed that your eyebrows kind of glitter in the sun. And there’s something about the way you move, something that’s beyond graceful, something that’s beyond human, even. It’s like you’re . . . something else.”

“You have made my life into something so extraordinary, you can't even know.”

“There it is," says Christian, looking at me with something like admiration."There what is?""The smile. You always smile when you ski”

“I wanted to kiss you,” he murmurs. “Me. Not because of some vision I saw. Because of you. Because of what I feel.”

“We think of happiness as something we can take. But usually it comes from being content with what we have, and accepting ourselves.”

“But maybe if he got close to me I could feel something. Maybe I could cry and the ache would go away.”