“How can I describe Peter's face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn't not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn't need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive.”

“It was like this sometimes, and I felt I should look away, but I couldn't. I wanted to be there, having my face touched, defeating a heart like Peter's, but the next best thing was seeing it for Tiger Lily.”

“An unspoken rivalry threaded their relationship, in which Tiger Lily thought that if she could keep up with him, she could hold tighter to him. It didn't occur to her there was anything in which Peter would want her to fail. But sometimes, I could see that, even for him, she was too fast, too sure-footed, and didn't seem to need him quite enough.”

“You looked strange climbing in the tree like that."Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her. "I didn't do it to look nice," she said."But you do care."Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. "I don't," she said."All girls do," he added, pushing the point."You must not know many girls.""I know a million," Peter said, dark and serious. There was a long awkward silence, but if Peter regretted his words, I couldn't tell.”

“Sometimes Peter treated her like she was the only thing in the forest. Sometimes he was so distracted by the things around him that she had to keep up or be left behind. But a lot of times, she knew he did it on purpose, and she didn't have to know why. He seemed to have reasons for doing things even he didn't understand.”

“I began to see that Wendy had something Tiger Lily hadn't even known she was supposed to have. Of all the things Tiger Lily had thought she might have to be for Peter-strong, brave; to be big and to keep up-she had never thought that the one thing he wanted most from her was simply to show that she believed in him, always and without fail.”

“Tiger Lily went back into the house, from which she kept watch of the ocean. She held her arms around her stomach and stayed awake. She didn't want him to catch her sleeping. Peter did not come that night, or the next day, and she stayed awake. She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible. For three days, she kept on studying the horizon, even speaking to it, as if a ship that had already disappeared could hear her. "Choose me." And Peter did choose. But he chose something else.”