“You have to stop this. I don't want to lose you too. If you have to make a revolution, Make a small revolution.”

“What about your mum? She got taken away. Mine too, I said. There was nothing special about that. It happened all the time.”

“I looked at his eyes. I was thinking: they are bluer than the sea.But then the sea is not blue at all, is it?”

“I stayed indoors most of the time, which kept my skin very white. And my hair was as black as Ilana's. I wore black clothes all the time, just as she did.When I was in elementary school the other girls had called me a witch, scratched me with their nails, giggled behind their notebooks. But now I was in high school and suddenly everyone wore black and had pale skin and cultivated a disheveled haunted look.Now I blended in.”

“What's your dad do? I said. Designs new and better wings for new and better sing nuts, he said proudly. It sounded like he was repeating something a sarcastic adult had said.”

“Couldn't help it, he insisted. My dad would bell me to draw a flower and it would turn into a Venus flytrap chewing on a hand.”

“He was a man who always gave the impression of wearing a top hat, even when he was not.”