“Everyone always noticed Ashley. She was like a flashing neon sign for anyone with an ounce of testosterone.”

“Additionally, you can paint a neon sign over our heads that says, 'Easy meal, follow the flashing lights.”

“But Ashley had always understood. He had always known there was a person behind the silence - not just a person who listened with her eyes and would have responded in similar words if she could have, but one who inhabited a world of her own and lived in it quiet as richly as anyone in his world. With Ashley there had always been a language. There had always been a way of giving him glimpses of herself.”

“I began to feel like I was wearing a sign on my forehead that said FUCKED UP in big neon letters.”

“I’m two hours late when I pull in to the driveway. It won’t matter that I’m always on time. People never see how good you are. Fuck up once, and it’s like you are wearing a neon sign.”

“The tone of his voice is like he expects a fight, like he’s challenging me to disagree, and I want to tell him that I don’t care one way or the other. That her blood-relative status makes no difference as long as she loves him. And she does. She wears it, beaming it around like a neon sign.”