“The louder the babies screamed, the brighter the lights.”

“When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.”

“She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.”

“Around fourth grade something similar happens with eyes. The baby eyes don't drop out, nor are there eye fairies around to leave quarters under pillows, but new eyes do arrive nevertheless. Big-kid eyes replace little-kid eyes. Little-kid eyes are scoopers. They just scoop up everything they see and swallow it whole, no questions asked. Big-kid eyes are picky. They notice things that little-kid eyes never bothered with: the way a teacher blows her nose, the way a kid dresses or pronounces a word.”

“She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was.”

“Of course we did other things too. We walked. We talked. We rode bikes.Though I had my driver's license, I bought a cheap secondhand bicycle soI could ride with her. Sometimes she led the way, sometimes I did. Wheneverwe could, we rode side by side.She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh.My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timidintroverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence Ithrew back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s no one answer to that. You have tofind your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a bigpink soft soap eraser, and it’s going back and forth, back and forth,and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, andthere they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then myankles. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-myeyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. Mythoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That’s the hardest,erasing my thoughts.” She chuckled faintly. “My pumpkin. And then, ifI’ve done a good job, I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then theworld is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl.”