“For years, we'd been the thorn of the neighborhood, the dirty little secret that wasn't so secret. The girls who just wouldn't settle.”

“(Addie) I said. (If it had been you - if it were you trapped inside. If you were the one who couldn't move, I'd go back. I'd go back in a second.)”

“I was terrified. I was eleven years old, and though I'd been told my entire life that it was entirely natural for the recessive soul to fade away, I didn't want to go. I wanted twenty thousand more sunrises, three thousand more hot summer days at the pool. I wanted to know what it was like to have a first kiss. The other recessives were lucky to have disappeared at four or five. They knew less.”

“There's only so long you can be at the zoo before it gets old.”

“One second. A snapshot of fear and sweat and blood.”

“Addie was warm and radiant next to me, making up half of us. But I - I was Eva, Eva, Eva, all the way through.”

“The silence was like an unwelcome child, pulling at our hair, running its fingers over our lips.”