“Yes, Lex was her friend. Yes, she wanted to help him out. But Terrible … he wasn’t her friend, he was her life.”

“She wasn’t going to lie and she wasn’t going to try to hide Terrible or who he was. She loved him and he was hers, and that made her so proud her chest hurt, and if anybody didn’t like it they could go fuck themselves.”

“And after that until the end, there was no relief from being a girl with chores that she wasn’t being paid for, a girl with no new sandals and a friend who wasn’t a friend but a mistress, and a family that wasn’t but people who owned her and ordered her about, and nothing at all but her pretty breasts and her round bottom and her misbehaving hair to help her feel any different.”

“Tereza had gone back to sleep; he could not. He pictured her death. She was dead and having terrible nightmares; but because she was dead, he was unable to wake her from them. Yes, that is death: Tereza asleep, having terrible nightmares, and he unable to wake her.”

“If she wasn’t his best friend… There really was no point in finishing that thought. She was and it was his job as the man in her life to kick the living shit out of any asshole that hurt her.”

“Crysta, to her credit, never complained—it wasn’t her way. Yes, she would ask and remind nicely, and persistently, until she got what she wanted. But complain? No.”