“I could feel my blood just starting to boil, like when I’d lost my car keys and I knew they were around somewhere close, but I couldn’t find them anyway, and I wanted to scream.”

“I looked over Emma’s shoulder. I recognized the girls in the photos. I understood we used to be close. But they were like books I’d read two summers ago; I knew I’d liked them, but I couldn’t tell you now what they’d been about.”

“When I was Allie the Fringer, I used to collect books like this, from anywhere I could find them. Of Course, in the Fringe, owning them was highly illegal. The vampire lords didn’t want their cattle to be able to read—it might put ideas in our heads if they knew what life was like before. But one of my greatest secrets was that I could read. My mom had taught me when she was still alive, and I’d clung to that accomplishment fiercely. It was the one thing the vampires couldn’t take from me.”

“I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.”

“I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.”

“My head was spinning. I felt like I’d been drifting, lost at sea all my life, and now that I’d found dry land, I couldn’t quite get my bearings.”