“If I catch you making eyes at Hunter Chenier tonight, it's over between us.' She looked over her shoulder. 'That a promise?”

“The first time she carved something into her skin, she used the sharp tip of an X-Acto knife. She lifted up her shirt to show me after the cuts had scabbed over. She had scrawled F*** YOU on her stomach. I stood quiet for a moment, feeling the breath get knocked out of me. I should have grabbed her arm and taken her straight to the nurse's office, into that small room with two cots covered in paper sheets and the sweet, stale medicinal smell.I should have lifted Ingrid's shirt to show the cuts. Look, I would've said to the nurse at her little desk, eyeglasses perched on her pointed nose. Help her.Instead, I reached my hand out and traced the words. The cuts were shallow, so the scabs only stood out a little bit. They were rough and brown. I knew that a lot of girls at our school cut themselves. They wore their long sleeves pulled down past their wrists and made slits for their thumbs so that the scars on their arms wouldn't show. I wanted to ask Ingrid if it hurt to do that to herself, but I felt stupid, like I must have been missing something, so what I said was, F*** you too, b****. Ingrid giggled, and I tried to ignore the feeling that something good between us was changing.”

“I sleep through the next day. Each time I go to the bathroom, I try not to look in the mirror. Once, I catch my reflection: it looks like I’ve been punched in both eyes.I can’t talk about the day that follows that.”

“She Snores," said Siku, looking at me. "You better get earplugs. That kind of thing runs in the family."I opened my mouth, glancing at Caleb, whose eyes got wide in disbelief. Had Siku made a joke? I was too dumbfounded to reply.”

“Right now I want you naked against me," Dean says. "I want to wake up cold because you’ve hogged all the blankets. I want to feel your leg between mine, your hair in my face, your arm flung across my chest. I want to find myself on the edge of the bed in the morning because you’ve sprawled all over the mattress. I want to sleep with you.”

“My best friend is dead, and I could have saved her. It’s so wrong so completely and painfully wrong, that I walked through my front door tonight smiling.”

“If things happen for a reason, I was meant to get fucked over.”