“At one store, Gansey had started to pay for Blue's potato chips and she'd snatched them away. "I don't want you to buy me food!" Blue said. "If you pay for it, then it's like I'm... be---be---" "Beholden to me?" Gansey suggested pleasantly. "Don't put words into my mouth." "It was your word." "You assumed it was my word. You can't just go around assuming." "But that is what you meant, isn't it?" She scowled. "I'm done with this conversation.”

“You are being self-pitying.""I'm nearly done. You don't have much more of this to bear.""I like you better this way.""Crushed and broken," Gansey said. "Just the way women like 'em.”

“Of course, she could still walk away. She won't, he thought. She has to feel it, too. He said, " I've always liked the name Jane." Blue's eyes widened. "Ja--what? Oh! No, no, You can't go around naming people other things because you don't like their real name. "I like Blue just fine,"Gansey said. He didn't believe she was really offended; her face didn't look like it had at Nino's when they'd first met, and her ears were turning pink. He thought possibly, he was getting a little better at not offending her, although he couldn't seem to stop teasing her. "Some of my favorite shirts are blue. However, I also like Jane." "I'm not answering to that.”

“Blue." It was Ronan's voice, for the first time, and everyone, even Helen, twisted their head towards him. His head was cocked in a way that Gansey recognized as dangerous. Something in his eyes was sharp as he stared at Blue. He asked, "Do you know Gansey?" ... Blue looked defensive under their stares. She said reluctantly. "Only his name." With his fingers loosely together, elbows on his knees, Ronan leaned forward across Adam to be closer to Blue. He could be unbelievably threatening. "And how is it," he asked," you came to know Gansey's name?”

“She watched his throat move, and then, he reached out and touched her face. "You sure are pretty," he said. "It's the stone," she replied immediately. Her skin felt warm; his fingertip touched just the very edge of her mouth. "It's flattering." Adam gently pulled the stone out of her hand and a set it on the floorboards between them. Through his ingers he threaded one of the flyaway hairs by her cheek. "My mother used to say, 'Don't throw compliments away, so long as they're free." HIs face was very earnest. "That one wasn't mean tho cost you anything, Blue." Blue plucked at the hem on her dress, but she didn't look away from him. "I don't know what to say when you say things like that." "You can tell me if you want me to keep saying them." She was torn by the desire to encourage him and the fear of where it would lead. "I like when you say things like that." Adam asked, "But what?" "I didn't say but." "You meant to. I heard it.”

“So I take it you and Gansey get along, then?” Maura’s expression was annoyingly knowing.“Mom.”“Orla told me about his muscle car,” Maura continued. Her voice was still angry and artificially bright. The fact that Blue was well aware that she’d earned it made the sting of it even worse. “You aren’t planning on kissing him, are you?”“Mom, that will never happen,” Blue assured her. “You did meet him, didn’t you?”“I wasn’t sure if driving an old, loud Camaro was the male equivalent of shredding your T-shirts and gluing cardboard trees to your bedroom walls.”“Trust me,” Blue said. “Gansey and I are nothing like each other. And they aren’t cardboard. They’re repurposed canvas.”“The environment breathes a sigh of relief.” Maura attempted another sip of her drink; wrinkling her nose, she shot a glare at Persephone. Persephone looked martyred. After a pause, Maura noted, in a slightly softer voice, “I’m not entirely happy about you’re getting in a car without air bags.”“Our car doesn’t have air bags,” Blue pointed out.Maura picked a long strand of Persephone’s hair from the rim of her glass. “Yes, but you always take your bike.”Blue stood up. She suspected that the green fuzz of the sofa was now adhered to the back of her leggings. “Can I go now? Am I in trouble?”“You are in trouble. I told you to stay away from him and you didn’t,” Maura said. “I just haven’t decided what to do about it yet. My feelings are hurt. I’ve consulted with several people who tell me that I’m within my rights to feel hurt. Do teenagers still get grounded? Did that only happen in the eighties?”“I’ll be very angry if you ground me,” Blue said, still wobbly from her mother’s unfamiliar displeasure. “I’ll probably rebel and climb out my window with a bedsheet rope.”Her mother rubbed a hand over her face. Her anger had completely burned itself out. “You’re well into it, aren’t you? That didn’t take long.”“If you don’t tell me not to see them, I don’t have to disobey you,” Blue suggested.“This is what you get, Maura, for using your DNA to make a baby,” Calla said.Maura sighed. “Blue, I know you’re not an idiot. It’s just, sometimes smart people do dumb things.”Calla growled, “Don’t be one of them.”“Persephone?” asked Maura.In her small voice, Persephone said, “I have nothing left to add.” After a moment of consideration, she added, however, “If you are going to punch someone, don’t put your thumb inside your fist. It would be a shame to break it.”“Okay,” Blue said hurriedly. “I’m out.”“You could at least say sorry,” Maura said. “Pretend like I have some power over you.”

“The way Gansey saw it was this: if you had a special knack for finding things, it meant you owed the world to look.”