“The bookcase was filled with computer games, history books, and sci-fi novels in about equal proportions. Odd reading choices, maybe, but I just thought of it as past and future history.”

“So I thought I’d feel different afterward, after the visible neon sign proclaiming 'virgin' had blinked out on my forehead. I’d spent years obessessing about it, so it seemed like somthing should have changed. Maybe it would have if I’d still been at Ceder Falls High School surrounded by the gossip and the braggadocio of teenage boys. But on my uncle's farm, nobody noticed, or at least nobody said anything. The next day, like every day, we dug corn, chopped wood, and carried water. And it didn’t really change much between Darla and me, either. Yes, making love was fun, but it wasn’t really any more fun than anything we’d already been doing together. Just different.”

“Hunger of choice is a painful luxury; hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.”

“A librarian can’t live by books alone, and I wouldn’t eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism.”

“I hate to disappoint, but I just lay there, curled in a ball, shaking in pure terror.”

“Maybe we were ghosts of a sort, spirits from the world that had died when the volcano erupted.”

“I felt bad about dirtying their comforter with my nasty clothes, but who knew what might happen later. If something else bizarre went down and I had to run, I sure didn’t want to do it butt naked.”