“[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon]I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy - all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of out football team if we were the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym”

“My grandmother thinks it's really funny to put all sorts of things in our - my lunch. I never know what'll be inside: e.e. cummings, flower petals, a handful of buttons. She seems to have lost sight of the original purpose of the brown bag." - Lennie"Or maybe she thinks other forms of nourishment are more important." - Joe”

“At night,when we were little,we tented Bailey's covers,crawled underneath with our flashlightsand played cards: Hearts,Whist, Crazy Eights, and our favourite: Bloody Knuckles.The competition was vicious,All day, every day,we were the Walker Girls -two peas in a podthick as thieves -but when Gram closed the doorfor the night,we bared our teeth.We played for chores,for slave duty,for truths and dares and money.We played to be better, brighter,to be more beautiful,more,just more.But it was all a ruse -we playedso we could fall asleepin the same bedwithout having to ask,so we could wrap togetherlike a braid,so while we sleptour dreams could switch bodies.(Found written on the inside cover of Wuthering Heights, Lennie's room)”

“Before he finally hops on his borad, he hugs me good-bye and we hold on to each other so tightly under the sad, starless sky that for a moment I feel as if our heartbreak were one instead of two.”

“This is the secret I kept from you, Bails,from myself too:I think I liked that Mom was gone,that she could be anybody,anywhere,doing anything.I liked that she was our invention,a woman living on the last page of the storywith only what we imaginedspread out before her.I liked that she was ours, alone.”

“... every available inch of his face busts into a smile - whoa. Has he blown into our school on a gust of wind from another world? The guy looks unabashedly jack-o'-lantern happy, which couldn't be more foreign to the sullen demeanor most of us strove to perfect.”

“He looks at me incredulously. "I think you're amazing..." Why would he think this? Bailey is amazing and Gram and Big, and of course Mom, but not me. I am the two-dimensional one in a 3-D Family”