“Before we could pretend not to see him, he waved. We all waved back. And no one said anything mean, even after he jogged away with his shorts riding up so high he looked like he was naked. Maybe simply because it would have been too easy. And all I can say about that morning is – how did we three know instinctively where the lines are between being funny and being brutal? I mean, why is it that everywhere I look, other people seem to be crossing those boundaries constantly? Jumping, falling, leaping over the line from banter into cruelty. Sometimes it’s on purpose and other times it’s by accident, but in any case, people savage each other. Maybe because they can’t help it.”

“I mean, we have to read books or we'll make mistakes. If we read stories of how other people lived, we can figure out better ways to live. I mean we can look at other people's lives and not make the same mistakes they made. Or we can, like, use their examples as models for ourselves.”

“You're so privileged to be there, you feel like you have to complain about something just so you don't have to think about how lucky you are. It's kind of over compensation, I think, when I'm feeling generous about it. Or, when I'm not, I think maybe it's just the basic requirement of being a teenager, feeling like you have to be perfect every time, and when you have an algebra test or a hangnail, the rest of the war-torn, poverty-stricken, deformed world ought to turn its attention to you.”

“Ms. Doman had this whole thing about how we have to tell stories about whatever happens to us, and then we can use those stories to decide whether out lives are happy or not, whether events have redeeming aspects or are totally hopeless, that it's really all about how we choose to shape and name things.”

“Then he paused, and I could tell that whatever he was going to say was really important. There was even a chance he might use more than five words to say it. "Or maybe your magic isn't destructive after all. The rain of Doritos, the bed things, this...Maybe it's just that you create too big, you know?"When I could find my voice, I said, "Cal, that might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me since we got here."He twirled one of the naked roots between his finger and didn't meet my eyes. "It's true." The he glanced up and gazve one of those half smiles I was really starting to like.”

“But if you look under the "girls gone wild" surface, which was easy for me to do since I was sover and actually below everyone wo formed that surface, ou could see that it was just a bunch of insecure teenagers guzzling alcohol and Kool-Aid from Dixie cups and freaking out about how "stressed out" they were about SATs and APs and rehearsals and auditions and résumé-padding efforts.”

“You know what he said? He said that being away from me is less like being away from a person than being away from other people is. I don't know anyone else who would say something like that. And he was right. When we were apart, I missed him all the time, but he didn't feel faraway. He felt closer than the kids at school."...Certain people are like that, I guess. They're together no matter where they are. They just belong to each other.”