“Simon had drawn three pictures. In the top left corner, like a salutation, was a ghost. The middle had a big sketch of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. The third in place of a signature, was a lightning bolt surrounded by fog. Beside the drawing, someone had scrawled in inch-high letters 10 A.M.Tori snatched it from me and turned it over. "So where's the message?""Right there." I pointed from picture to picture. "It says: Chloe, I'll be back, Simon.”

“The kitchen was bright, cheerful yellow, the walls decorated with framed chalk and pencil sketches Simon and Rebecca had done in grade school. Rebecca had some drawing talent, you could tell, but Simon's sketches of people all looked like parking meters with tufts of hair.”

“I think I see it." I hoped I was looking in the right place. Constellations had always seemed like a cruel joke to me. How could someone take a few dots in the sky, turn them into an elaborate picture, and expect everyone to share their delusion?”

“Top Trumps appeared to be a game in which you got cards, and the cards had a picture (in this case, of a horse), and told you all kinds of stats for that horse, how fast it was, how big it was, etc. Whoever had the better horse won both the cards. You repeated this until someone had all the cards. So, basically it was exactly like high school, except it only took three minutes. Which was really a bit more humane, if you thought about it.”

“I had to say it gave me a warm feeling to picture Meredith Winslow spending twenty years or so in an ill fitting orange jumpsuit, cozying up to a great big girl named Beulah”

“She is prettier than her picture had prepared me for, blond curls, big blue eyes, like a fake child that someone would make in order to convince people to have children.”