“At school, the news that Pia Kolvenbach was moving to England and that her parents were divorcing had circulated with lightening speed. Suddenly I was no longer ostracized for being the Potentially Exploding Girl, but the new attention was worse. I could tell that the girls who sidled up to me and asked with faux-sympathetic smiles whether it was true were doing it on the basis of discussions they had heard between their own parents, to who they would report back like scouts. Soon there would be nothing left of me at all, nothing real: I would be a walking piece of gossip, alternatively tragic and appalling and, worse of all, a poor thing.”

“Her parents had gone from a couple who would be different, who would be better than anyone, who were determined to be better than most, to a couple who would be different because they were worse.”

“Did I ever tell you I went to school in America?""What? No.""It's true,for a year. Eighth grade. It was terrible.""Eighth grade is terrible for everyone," I say."Well,it was worse for me. My parents had just seperated,and my mum moved back to California.I hadn't been since I was an infant,but I went with her,and I was put in this horrid public school-""Oh,no. Public school."He nudges me with his shoulder. "The other kids were ruthless. They made fun of everything about me-my height,my accent, the way I dressed.I vowed I'd never go back.""But American girls love English accents." I blurt this without thinking, and then pray he doesn't notice my blush.St. Clair picks up a pebble and tosses it into the river. "Not in middle school, they don't.Especially when it's attached to a bloke who comes up to their kneecaps."I laugh."So when the year was over,my parents found a new school for me. I wanted to go back to London,where my mates were, but my father insisted on Paris so he could keep an eye on me. And that's how I would up at the School of America.”

“I'd heard about the traffic accidnet on the radio after I'd dropped Abbot off at school. I heard about the accident, that there were mutiple fatalities, an oil tanker ablaze, and the backed-up traffic on the interstate, and I had one simple though : I would take an alternate route. That was it, I would take an alternate route. Worse, I felt lucky - not because I was alive and others were dead but because I'd caught the update in time to avoid the exit ramp that would have landed me in he thick of it.”

“It didn't matter if i was the kind of girl who had sex, or the kind of girl who had her portrait on on a wall in the library, or the kind of girl who who got into the best college, or the kind of girl who didn't tell her parents everything, or the kind of girl who teachers loved. I just needed to be okay with all the kinds of girl I was.”

“A classmate from elementary school had married and divorced. Yamada was now raising two children on his own and going gray, which made her laugh. Kazumi, who had been living with a man, went home to her family. Yuusuke, who was trying to become a public servant, failed his test. Yamazaki, who was making erotic games, had all his dreams destroyed. "I'm testing my own talent. It doesn't have to be an erotic game, but I'll do. . . I'll do something!" When he proclaimed this, drunk from sake, his future already was set as a dairy farmer, chasing after cows. I no longer could see how he could escape it. At reunions and parties, everyone laughed and made a big fuss. Those events were fun, as was karaoke. Everyone had a good time and seemed sure that the future would be perfect: We could become anything! We could do anything! We could become happy! These things were true—but steadily, very steadily, at a speed so terribly slow we didn't even notice it, we were being run down. There was nothing we could do, even if we were in trouble, defeated, of crying. Every one of us eventually had some terrible experiences. The only difference was whether it would happen sooner or later; but in the end, we all would fall into some really unbearable situation. I was scared. I was scared of all sorts of things.”