“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.”

“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 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'm happy for the kid and everything, but how the fuck does Lio get a friend before me? I live here. 'I told you I could do it :)' Lio IMs me. I want to rip out that smiley's eyes.”

“Even though Graham and I went back to arguing and stealing socks and hiding each other's toothbrushes in the litter box, I didn't forget that Graham didn't think I needed a best friend, because either it meant he thought I was cool enough to handle everything alone or—and this was what I hoped—it meant that he was my best friend, quietly, forever, no matter what.I mean, after all, whose skates had I been wearing?”

“I could totally be a . . .whatever.”“Sailor?”“On a boat?”“Yep.”“Yeah.” He’ll sigh all wistfully. “I could be a sailor. But I’m too busy being a fish.”

“He says, "But it is really whatever, you know? You've saved me way more times. And we call ourselves friends."It doesn't matter what we call ourselves, really. "You already saved me," I say."That was nothing.""I'm not talking about the cave."He wrinkles his nose."That first day," I say, "When you got up on the rocks to flirt with a human boy."He smiles big, with all his ground-down teeth shining.”