“I'm so sorry-I broke you moose?”

“Hey," he said smiling at me pulling off his sunglasses. "Did you get me something good?" "I think so," I said trying to ignore how hard my heart was beating. Then before I could think about it or analyze or consider what I was doing I leaned over and kissed him.”

“I'm not worried about your making friends, having fun, learning, or making your mark on the world. The only thing that I'm a little worried about is your heart.”

“I wondered how anyone could have been so sure about a concept so tenuous and impossible as always that they'd be willing to carve it into a tabletop.”

“I looked away from his direct gaze and down at the scratched surface of the table. Someone had etched into it RYAN LOVES MEGAN ALWAYS...I wondered who Ryan and Megan were. And if, wherever they were, they'd made it. I wondered how anyone could have been so sure about a concept so tenuous and impossible as 'always' that they'd be willing to carve it into a tabletop.”

“That's us," I said smiling brightly. "The Udells." That seemed to wake Roger up a little, and he blinked at me, surprised."Finally," the clerk muttered. "All right. Names?" he asked, fingers posed over his keyboard."Oh," I said, "Well. That's... Edmund. And I'm Hillary." Roger glanced over at me, a little more sharply, and I tried to shrug as subtly as possible.”

“All I could determine was that it must have been a nice thing to see if it was a house you were thinking about moving into. But not so nice if it was the house you were moving out from. I could practically hear Mr Collins, who had taught my fifth-grade English class and was still the most intimidating teacher I'd ever had, yelling at me. "Amy Curry," I could still hear him intoning, "never end a sentence with a preposition!" Irked that after six hears he was still mentally correcting me, I told the Mr. Collins in my head to off fuck.”