“Hi Clara. I thought you would need someone to walk with today, so here I am.” Sorin, her friend that lived in the trailer park around the corner beamed at her from the sidewalk. Maybe not the best looking, but he was a sweet boy, and someone that Clara considered a friend. And like her, he didn't fit in at school either. His strange obsession with science fiction books and obscure poetry may have been the catalyst for that reputation.”

“He pried Clara's arms loose and stood up, smoothing his wrinkled coat. Clara looked straight into his face. Her eyelids were red, but her gaze was like a lance. Dr. Wintermute had a sudden, uncomfortable conviction that she had seen into his soul. It was a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come.”

“When I asked my father whether he thought that it was possible that his mother was raped behind that closed door, he said, "She had washer-woman knees. No one could possibly think of her as a sexual object. Besides," he explained, "she would have told my sisters, and they would have told me." I am not so sure. Maybe someone needed to ask her. Someone needed to want to know, to be able to hear the answer.”

“He knew that her body was his to engage in all the acrobatics he had learned in the books he kept hidden in a corner of his library, but with Clara even the most abominable contortions were like the thrashings of a newborn; it was impossible to spice them up with the salt of evil or the pepper of submission.”

“I didn't like that look, and I didn't want it. But you can't just tell someone to knock off her look because she'll only give you another. And if you happen to raise your voice too much while asking her to stop looking, she'll hurry off to tell a friend about your behavior the second you walk out of earshot. And then that friend will come find you under some kind of pretense, wanting to decipher what's up your ass today.”

“I leaned back to look at her, seeing only her, this girl who was Ally but also Alona, and who bore a resemblance to a friend i'd once had but was someone new. Someone i could live without, but didn't want to”