“Not only does he reduce my best friend’s emotional state to something akin to an annoying rash, he also plants a new seed in my already overcrowded brain”

“Keep it,” he says. “Something to remember me by.”“I don’t need a sweatshirt for that,” I say, already putting it back on.“Then keep it because it’s cool.”“Deal.”

“You think we live in Norway or something? Amir Jordan is Pakistani. There's also an Asian guy, some Puerto Ricans, and the starting left wing has, like, carrot-hair. he must be Irish. It's the whole UN over there.”

“She makes her people work on Sundays?" Rachel whispers, pulling some of my grandmother's old food from he fridge and sniffing it."Nah-weekends are optional. They only have to work them if they want to keep their jobs.”

“Sometimes I wonder if my whole life will pass by this way: me waiting in the shadows, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone else to make it happen. Something new or different or crazy and amazing. I‘ve been there for so long, letting everyone else figure it out for me, floating along without much direction or conscious thought. Reacting.”

“It got him killed, but at least he felt something.”

“If I'd known he was going to die, my last words to him would have meant something. They certainly wouldn't have been my out-of-tune attempt at singing that old Grateful Dead song he loved so much. No, I would have told him how I felt about him, straight out. No more flirting, wild-eyed whispers in the grass outside. I would have looked at him harder to ensure his image was permanently seared in my mind. I'd have asked him a million more things so I could remember what mattered before I got in the car on the way home from Custard's. Because after, nothing mattered.”