“If he'd been any other boy, and this was any other world, I would have kissed him. Nothing could have stopped me.”

“When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.”

“Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.”

“I'd seen another shade of him, and if it had been light where we were now, he'd have seen the same of me. So I was grateful, as I had been so often in my life, for the dark.”

“The lizard stared up at us, and we stared back, taking each other in. He was little and defenseless, I felt sorry for him already. This was a screwed-up place he'd just come into. But he didn't have to know that. Not yet, anyway. There in that room, where it was hot and cramped, the world probably still seemed small enough to manage.”

“Macy: “In Truth,” I said, “there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.”Wes: “How do you win?” he askedMacy: “That,” I said, “is such a boy question.”

“I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome."Okay," he said. He took a breath. "What would you do, if you could do anything?"I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. "This," I said. And then I kissed him.”