“If one thing was perfectly, crystalline clear, it was that I could take care of myself. I just kept coming and coming and coming. I was what I was.”

“Bethany blinked. "Did you just hit me?" she asked, disbelief coloring her every feature.Skylar raised both hands, palms outward. "I come in peace!""You do not come in peace. You hit me.""I hit in peace!”

“Skylar todl you to come here?" I asked dumbly."No," Bethany said. "Skylar told me not to come here. Same dif.”

“Sometimes, I felt like if I could just fold up into a small enough ball, my body would collapse on itself like a star, and I could supernova myself into a new existence.”

“At that point in time, there were three things in life that I knew for certain: (1) I was a girl who’d never met a site she couldn’t hack or a code she couldn’t break, (2) I had a roundhouse that could put a grown man in the hospital, and (3) I would without question chop off my own hands before I’d come within five feet of a pom-pom”

“I had no weapons. No plan. Nothing but my blood and my hands. They were coming, and there were more of them than I'd realized.”

“My little sister snuck out of the house carrying a circular-saw blade and a can of Mace. I couldn't exactly let her come alone.”