“I know I shouldn't turn to look at Cicely, no matter how much I want to. So I don't. But I can't stop myself from looking in the rearview mirror, as if looking at her indirectly will help somehow, like looking at an eclipse.”

“You think I can't pull it off, don't you? You think I'll look stupid next to someone like Luke. You think he's too good for me." This is my chance. I should say yes and make her hate me, kill her last bit of hope. Easy. Like staking a vamp. "I think you'll look beautiful." I turn away. "No one's too good for you. No one's good enough.”

“Cicely glances over at him. She looks a good kind of nervous when she should look a bad kind of scared.”

“You want to know why I brought you out here." "The question had crossed my mind, yes. But I figured it was probably to buy me horses or feed me caviar. Or, you know, to kill me." He looks up surprised. "Kill you? No. And in the future I would say if you suspect someone wants to kill you, you shouldn't follow him into the woods.”

“Luke grabs my hand. I turn to see a look of pure horror on his face. "This," he says, "is a dance?" "You were expecting what?" I say. "Why are they not dancing?" I look around the gym again. "Well, most people are dancing." I nod at the freshman boys, who have resorted to doing the robot. "They're dancing." Luke looks completely unconvinced. "And the music," he says, "is it always this.....loud?" I laugh. "You sound like you're forty. You have been to a dance before, right?" Luke looks offended. "Yes. Of course. But it was more..." he surveys the gyrating bodies around us "....civilised that this." He turns to me accusatory. "And you. Have you been to a dance?”

“The clock is ticking. I should be leaving right now. But what I want to do is take Cicely in my arms and press her up against me hard enough to make her not care that I'm messing up her lipstick. I want to pick her up and carry her back through that doorway. We're only a few strides from the couch, only one rip away from ruining that expensive fabric, the dress she must have bought to wear for him.”

“My Mother always wants to know why I don't just take things down, but I like it the way it is - like layers of sediment in an archaeology dig, or overlapping scales of armor. My room is the safest place I know.”