“I could just barely see the dark curve of his shoulder, and something about the shape it made, the gesture it suggested, filled me with a sort of fierce, awful affection.”

“He slouched back in his seat, looking tired, and leaned his face on his shoulder to look at me while he played with my hair. He started to hum a song, and then, after a few bars, he sang it. Quietly, sort of half-sung, half-spoken, incredibly gentle. I didn’t catch all the words, but it was about his summer girl. Me. Maybe his forever girl. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an icecovered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me.”

“I laughed, loud enough that Delia looked up at me. She made motions for me to come over, but I pretended to be looking past her into the food tent. "Hurry. Pretend you're pointing something out so I can pretend not to see her." Luke put a hand on my shoulder and pointed with the other towards the sky. "Look, the moon." "That was the best you could come up with?" I demanded.”

“There was something awful about terror trapped behind silence.”

“Do you ever get the feeling that something awful might happen?' James asked me. . . I sat up. 'I'm the awful thing that happens.”

“I feel a strange, fierce squeeze in my heart when I see him, like pride, although there's nothing about Sean that I can take credit for.”

“The room went dark and, after a moment, Grace whispered that she loved me, sounding a little sad. I wrapped my arms tightly around her shoulders, sorry that loving me was such a complicated thing.”