“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.”

“She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.”

“If there was a true moment that Tiger Lily fell so in love with Peter she could never turn back, it was that night, when he shivered and walked and told her he was warm, and told her he loved her so much. She was fierce, to be sure, but she had a girl's heart, after all. As she walked home that night, she was shaking from the largeness of it.”

“Right now the nightmares were in her waking hours so she needed to stay asleep. She was broken. Shattered. Devastated. Crushed. There was nothing left of the woman she had been. She could see it in her eyes. When she was awake she had to acknowledge her brokenness. She had to admit to herself that she might never be fixed. It was too much to think about. Her boy had to come back and, until he did, she needed to stay in her dreams.”

“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.”

“Scared by the noise, Millie looked down at her brothers. Then she held out both arms and Tom's stomach turned cold. She was going to jump to him, like she did from the back of the sofa. She was going to jump, confident that he'd catch her, like he always did.”