“Scary, how easy it is to forget bad things.”

“If you mean a few little things—the exact sound of his voice, the shade of his hair, then okay, yeah. You’re going to forget. But Ben isn’t those things, you know? He’s your brother. He’s made up of every moment in his life. You’ll never forget all of that.”

“Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.”

“You, Mackenzie Bishop,” he says as we hit the landing, “have been a very bad girl.” “How so?” He rounds the banister at the base of the staircase. “You involved me in a lie! Don’t think I didn’t catch it.”

“Everything about Wesley Ayers is messy. My three worlds are kept apart by walls and doors and locks, and yet here he is, tracking the Archive into my life like mud. I know what Da would say, I know, I know, I know. But the strange new overlap is scary and messy and welcome. I can be careful.”

“Maybe one day the words will pour out like so many others, easy and smooth and on their own. Right now they take pieces of me with them.”

“Lying is easy. But it's lonely.""What do you mean?""When you lie to everyone about everything, what's left? What's true?""Nothing," I say."Exactly.”