“For each full day you stick it out with the Kowalskis, you get to ask me one question.”Keri, unlike Joe, did have a poker face and she made sure it was in place while she turned his words over in her head. “When you say the Kowalskis, you mean…”“The entire family.” The dimples were about as pronounced as she’d ever seen them. “Every one of them.”Her first thought was oh shit. Her second, to wonder if People was hiring.”

“Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.”

“Real, she imagined later on, was something else; it had nothing to do with things you could touch. Real was being seen, noticed, acknowledged, and later remembered. Real was people thinking about you when you weren't in the room. If others thought about you, then you must be more than a made-up dream. You need other people to be real, she decided. Otherwise you might just be a speck, an atom, inventing an elaborate story. It seemed like a paradox, but it must be so. She knew other people were real by thinking about them. Her thinking of her parents and her brothers, her school friends, were proof that they were real. They were both outside and in her head. But how could she be sure she was in anyone's head?”

“There's a very mean girl down the hall who's trying to get me fired. I'm no good with confrontation, so whenever I say, "Have a wonderful day," to her out loud, I'm really saying, "Be nice to me or I will stab you in the face with a fork," in my head. I wish her a wonderful day at least once an hour. She's starting to get paranoid and jumpy about it, but there's really nothing she can do, because she can't complain about me wishing her a wonderful day without sounding totally insane. This is why you should never mess with nonconfrontational people. Because they're too unstable to second-guess. And because they're totally the kind of people who could suddenly snap, and stab you in the face with a fork.”

“Sometimes I did wonder though why Ashling was with me. On that one occasion when I asked her what she saw in me, she wouldn't give me a straight answer. When I pressed her on it, she said that if someone loves you then all you have to do is let them.”

“I said, have you seen your butt?""Is that a rhetorical question?" I craned my neck to take a gander at my backside.Chloe clarified, "She means you have 'boy toy' written across the back of your jeans.""Oh." I nodded. "They're Josh's.""You say that as if it explains everything." She cocked her head to one side and considered me while buttoning her cardigan. "My stepbrothers dont write 'boy toy' across the back of their jeans.They only say the entire alphabet while burping.""That's nothing.Josh can recite the Gettysburg Address.”