“HEREIt’s-Can I say?It’s like the song of a family where everything’s always all right, it’s a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it’s a song that’ll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.”

“And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.”

“But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.”“And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.”“Lee—”“I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.”“He’d do it for me,” I say quietly.I’d do it for you too, Lee’s Noise says.And I know he would.But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them?So who’s right?”

“I can read it.I can read her.Cuz she’s thinking about how her own parents also came here with hope like my ma. She’s wondering if the hope at the end of our hope is just as false as the one that was at the end of my ma’s. And she;s taking the words of my ma and putting them into the mouths of her own ma and pa and hearing them say that they love her and they miss her and they wish her the world. And she’s taking the song of my pa and she’s weaving it into everything else till it becomes a sad thing all her own.And it hurts her, but it’s an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it’s good, but it hurts.She hurts.I know all this.I know it’s true.Cuz I can read her.I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none.I know who she is.I know Viola Eade.”

“It’s a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that’s what gets lost in all that Noise.”

“The only place you belong is the place you can never go back to.”

“I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn't left me behind.""Never," I say. "Not never."He looks back up at me. "I'd never leave you neither.""You promise?""Cross my heart, hope to die," he says, grinning shyly."I promise, too," I say and I smile at him. "I ain't never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again.”