“The crowd groaned. "Nice job doofus!" Finn said.”

“Don't try to change Doofus, let Doofus change you.”

“You turned red all over, Finn," Aiden said helpfully. "So did Teagan. As red as Kool-Aid."The back of Finn's neck went from pink lemonade to Blastin' Berry Cherry."Yeah," Aiden said. "Like that.""I don't want to talk about it," Finn said.”

“I'm sorry Finn. I'm a wooden-headed dummy.' Don't be so hard on yourself,' said Finn. 'You're just a straw-brained scarecrow.”

“We know it's all just daydreaming. In all likelihood, no one in this forest'll ever get a javelin, and I'll never see my mother's kingdom again, let alone be hailed by crowds as the jewel of Kildenree. Maybe it's vain to wish for it. But sometimes, it'd be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth. Right Finn?”

“Crowds, Scott said. People trudging along wide streets, pushing carts or riding bikes, crowd after crowd in the long lens of the camera so they seem even closer together than they really are, totally jampacked, and I think of how they merge with the future, how the future makes room for the non-achiever, the trudger, the nonagressor, the nonindividual. Totally calm in the long lens, crowd on top of crowd, pedaling, trudging, faceless, sort of surviving nicely.”