“You can't do that kind of thing normally, but normal dumped without a note nearly a month ago. These days, I'll happily set fire to a bridge the second after I've crossed it - I don't plan on being around for the consequences to catch up with me.”

“But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.”

“Normal! He thought. Normal! I don't want things to be normal. Normal is always being left out, never belonging.”

“Um...Mercer? Haven't seen you in nearly a month. I was expecting something like, 'Oh Cross, love of my heart, fire of my loins, how I've longed--”

“What if I can't forget you?I'll burn your name into my throat,I'll be the fire that'll catch you.What's so good about picking up the pieces?What if I don't even want to?”

“No, no! Sit down! I'll do the dishes. After nine and a half months of pregnancy, 26 hours of labor, and 18 stitches, you don't have to do a damn thing around here!”