“Papa was right, after all. A ship's crew was like a family, and together we had done what we never could have managed alone.”

“We rode through the night. No food offered, no water provided. They raided town after town until we finally reached the shore. There, we were tied to one another and driven like cattle onto a ship. They made sure to split us up. No families were permitted to be together. That would have shown a sense of humanity and these men, these slavers, had none.”

“My ex girlfriend and I, we had chemistry together. And right after that, we had biology.”

“Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.”

“After all, what are we, what is any one of us, if not a combination, particular and exact, of what we have done, what we have read, and what we have imagined?”

“You should have felt the buzz the moment all five of us got together in the same room for the first time again. We all started laughin'—it was like the five years had never passed. We knew we'd made the right move.”