“She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left.”

“Ellen rose to her feet. Jack thought for a moment she was going to storm out. Instead, she picked up the pitcher of hot fudge and poured the contents onto Leesha Middleton's pink jeans and fuzzy white sweater."Oops." Ellen sat down again and went back to eating her ice cream.Leesha screamed, a sound that could be heard in Canada. Every eye in Corcoran's was on her. She slid out of the booth and swiped ineffectually at her jeans with a napkin.Then she plucked at her ruined sweater with her thumb and forefinger. "You...you...I can't believe you did that!"Ellen licked whipped cream from the back of her spoon and looked at Leesha calmly.Leesha was tiny, but she seemed to expand, like an amphibian taking on air, then she drew herself up and retrieved her pink leather purse from the bench next to Jack. It was smeared with fudge too. "You'll pay for that, I promise you," she said to Ellen in a voice that raised the gooseflesh on Jack's neck. Then she turned and left.For a moment, Corcoran's was totally silent.Ellen looked across the table at Jack's sundae. "Are you going to finish that?”

“I thought maybe if she could express herself rather than suffer herself, if she had a way to relieve the burden, she lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own, she helped out at the store, then came home and sat in her big chair and stared at her magazines, not at them but through them, she let the dust accumulate on her shoulders.”

“Ellen drank long and deep from her water bottle and wiped her mouth with her gauntleted arm. "Are you feeling all right, Jack? Your play's flat, all in all. I was hoping to give Seph more of a show."Jack tested the edge of his blade with his thumb. "Actually, Ellen, I wondered if you were coming down with something. You were downright lethargic. I nearly dozed off once or twice.""Well, that explains it. You looked like you were asleep."With that, they threw down their weapons and it dissolved into a wrestling match. In the end they were kissing each other.It was certainly a different kind of courtship, but there was a chemistry, an understanding, a kinship between Jack and Ellen that Seph envied.”

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

“She had given herself to the world in her entirety and then found nothing was left”