“Seriously,let me talk to her when she wakes up. Girl-to-girl.""No offense, Chas, but you'd scare the crap out of her.""Want to say that to my face, Coalhouse?""What's left of it.”

“You know he's full of crap, right?" Chas spoke up."Grade A, gourmet crap," Coalhouse agreed.”

“I didn't say I was done with you. You think you want to sleep with me? Let me show you what happens to girls who wake up in my room,' Freddie said. He saw the fear in her face, but she obeyed. They always did.”

“Stop it!" Chas shrieked, stomping her foot. "I will not have my boyfriend fighting if it's not over me! Stop it!""Let's say it's over you!" Tom grunted as he and Coalhouse wrestled with one another. "If he thinks he's gonna finally get a girl, he might grow balls enough to beat me!”

“She didn't want me; she wanted all of me. I didn't mind saying it. My girlfriend scared the crap out of me.”

“In the happy times, in the tell-me-again times, when I’m seven and there are no stepbrothers and it’s before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed. Her bed is a raft on the ocean. It’s a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon we share. I stretch out big as I can, a five-pointed star, and she bundles me back up in her arms. When I wake I’m tangled in her hair. “Tell me again,” I say and she tells me again how she wanted me more than anything. “More than anything in the world,” she says, “I wanted a little girl.”