“Dad laughs. “You want to take a break? Go play with them?”The problem is I’m sixteen, almost seventeen, and I don’t want to play with them as much as I want to want to play with them. Maybe this feeling is what Noah’s been running from.”

“I’m bored of this. I want to hear about you. Favorite color. Go.”I laugh. “Green.”“I’m green!”“Fuck yeah you are.”“Why are you laughing? Isn’t this what friends do?”“Interrogate each other?”“What? Uh, sure. I don’t know what that means. But yes.”

“I don’t tell him about how I have to leave my family organism, break out firmly and finally. I don’t tell him that I’m a parasite, and I’m ruining them. That my functionality is tearing them to pieces.”

“I don't want to die, but I wish waking up every morning didn't feel like such a fuck-you every single time.”

“He shakes his head. "They're hunting the Enkis. I know that. And I get that. But . . . we're special.""The reason they want them is because they're special. Anchovies aren't going to cure anyone.""That's not the special I mean." He catches another fish and hugs it to his chest.I'm trying to be gentle. "They're only special to you because they're yours.""I could say the same thing about that cute kid you were holding."Well, shit.”

“Sixteen-year-old guys smell like deodorant and fast food. Then you turn seventeen and you get fresh.”

“I want to tell her not to speak, want to say it, but her lips are on mine again and I taste me and I taste her and I don't taste what we're saying and I don't taste Noah. I taste Camus—I owe to such evenings the idea I have of innocence.”