“This, she thought, isn’t just for today. It’s for everything. For the heartache that still felt like a punch in the gut each time it struck, fresh as new, at unpredictable moments; for the smiling lies and the mental images she couldn’t shake; for the shame of having been so naive. For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.”

“For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.”

“Sara, I didn’t realize you were so crazy,” Evan noticed. Sara just smiled in return and hopped away to find her new friends. “Did you know she was like this?”“Yes,” I stressed. “It’s one of the reasons we’re best friends. It’s not like she can be this way in school. This is how we are when we’re somewhere else.”

“It struck me then how much the past - not just the past but history and family - was like the ocean tide. It was always the same ocean, but the waves made it fresh and new each time.”

“The thought of talking about it made Pueblo's gut ache, but then he thought of everything that Amy had been through – not that she'd told him her version yet. She had balls of steel, he thought with a smile. And what did he have? Three pairs of loin cloths going crisp on the radiator.”

“Margaret liked this smile; it was the first thing she had admired in this new friend of her father's; and the opposition of character, shown in all these details of appearance she had just been noticing, seemed to explain the attraction they evidently felt towards each other.”