When 1:45 came, half the class left, and Danny Hupfer whispered, "If she gives you a cream puff after we leave, I'm going to kill you" - which was not something that someone headed off to prepare for his bar mitzvah should be thinking. When 1:55 came and the other half of the class left, Meryl Lee whispered, "If she gives you one after we leave, I'm going to do Number 408 to you." I didn't remember what Number 408 was, but it was probably pretty close to what Danny Hupfer had promised. Even Mai Thi looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, "I know your home." Which sounded pretty ominous.

Vengeance is sweet. Vengeance taken when the vengee isn't sure who the venger is, is sweeter still.

It means, Doug Swieteck, that in this class, you are not your brother.

Do you ever wonder what it's like to be so angry that you...And then something happens, and after that, everyone figures that's what you're like, and that's what you're always going to be, and so you just decide to be it? But the whole time you're thinking, Am I going to be like him? Or am I already like him? And then you get angrier, because maybe you are, and you want... He stopped. He wiped at his eyes. I'm not lying. My brother wiped at his eyes.

(The raindrops) played across the coast all through the night, until the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on pale yellow.

I know. That sounds like a lie. But Presbyterians know that every so often a lie isn't all that bad, and I figured that this was about the best place it could happen.

Learn everything you can - everything. And then use all that you have learned to grow up too be a wise and good man.