“I don't know if there is a one for me. I think I might like variety.”

“Gideon laughed. "I like to be direct.""Okay," I said. "But I warn you, I like to be evasive, inserutable and generally send mixed messages." "I doubt it.""Human interaction is not my strong point," I told him. "Not seriously.""Seriously," I said. Thinking: There is so much about me he doesn't know. Gideon put his hand on my leg. "What's your strong point, then?""Goats," I told him. "I am excellent with goats.”

“By now, you know everything about Jackson Clarke, probably way more than anyone on earth wants to hear. This is all I have to add: I still think about him every day. When I see him, my heart jumps up in my chest. I long for him to talk to me, and whenever he even says hello, I feel a thousand times worse than I did before. I wish he was dead. I wish he still liked me.”

“Or is that the nature of lust? It's like an urge that disregards all the stuff that your brain knows you actually think. I wonder if guys feel like this all the time. Or maybe if everyone feels like this all the time - everyone besides me - and that's why people act like such half-wits.”

“I think I want a guy who eats vegetables. And who isn't so normal. He was just a muffin, you know?”

“Roo: What’s your definition of popularity?Hutch: I used to think people were popular because they were good-looking, or nice, or funny, or good at sports. Roo: Aren’t they?Hutch: I’d think, if I could just be those things, I’d – you know – have more friends than I do. But in seventh grade, when Jackson and those guys stopped hanging out with me, I tried as hard as I could to get them to like me again. But then . . . (shaking his head as if to clear it) I don’t really wanna talk about it. Roo: What happened? Hutch: They just did some ugly stuff to me is all. And really, it was for the best. Roo: Why?Hutch: Because I was cured. I realized the popular people weren’t nice or funny or great-looking. They just had power, and they actually got the power by teasing people or humiliating them – so people bonded to them out of fear. Roo: Oh. Hutch: I didn’t want to be a person who could act like that. I didn’t want to ever speak to any person who could act like that. Roo: OhHutch: So then I wasn’t trying to be popular anymore. Roo: Weren’t you lonely?Hutch: I didn’t say it was fun. (He bites his thumbnail, bonsai dirt and all.) I said it was for the best.”

“I sound like an idiot. But what else am I supposed to say? My parents are getting a divorce? I'm practically flunking drawing and literature? My best friend's barely speaking to me and changes the subject when I ask where she was on Saturday night? I think about you all the time and I want your body?”