“You’ve both quit your jobs for me,” Laura said, though a little of the sass had left her voice.“I never liked it much anyway,” Cam said flippantly. “I was only there for the nookie, and when you walked away, that dried up.”

“Cammie!" I'll never forget the tone of Macey's voice in that moment. "Cam," she said slowly, moving toward me, "I know how it feels to be watched every second of every day. I know what it's like to trust fewer and fewer people until it seems like you are completely alone in the world. I know you think the only things that are left in your life are the bad things. I know what you're feeling, Cam." Her hands were on my shoulders. Her blue eyes were staring into mine. "I know.”

“They had nothing to eat but Ryan's food, and they ate little of that because it was so dry, but it seemed to sustain them. Their greatest worry was water. Though they drank only a little each day, Westerly's flask was empty and the bottle in Cally's pack now only half-full."I wish I was a camel," Cally said.Westerly said, "I wouldn't want to spend this much time with a girl who looked like a camel."She tried to laugh, but her tongue felt thick in her mouth, and her mind full of hopelessness. "When this is gone, we shall just die of thirst.""We'll be out of the dunes by then," Westerly said encouragingly. But he knew that the mountains, though nearer now on the hazy horizon, were far more than a day's walk away.”

“I'm my mother's first child, born when she was almost fourteen years old."Think of it," I said to Laura when I turned twelve. "I'm almost Mother Sarah's age when she was married."Laura looked at me, her squinty eyes even more narrowed. "You could have your own old man as a husband," she said."Shut up," I had said.And she had laughed.”

“I wouldn't have left you like that. Not like she did to me." I swallow hard. "She always said I'd die without her and she left anyway.""But you didn't die," He says."I did," I say. "I'm just waiting for the rest of me to catch up.”

“They said I would never live. I lived. They said I would never think. I think. They said I would never walk. I walked. They said I would never dance, but I never danced anyway.”