I hate you!” I screamed at Fang. Tucking my wings in, I aimed downward, diving toward the ground at more than two hundred miles an hour. “No you dooonnn’t!” Fang’s voice spiraled away into nothingness, far above me. Inside my head, almost drowned out by the roar of wind rushing by my ears, I heard the Voice make a tsking sound. You guys are crazy about each other, it said.

Please, I begged silently, please do not let my last moments on earth be me crammed into a tiny boat in the dark, surrounded by mechanical singing pirates.

It was a pretty complete list. The kind of list one makes when one cannot fall asleep because one's thoughts keep swirling through one's brain like a bunch of sparrows on crack.

Iggy. This is not a democracy," I said,(...)"It's a Maxocracy.

It gets so tiring, this strong-picking-on-the-weak stuff. It was the story of my life -literally- and it seemed to be a big part of the outside world too. I was sick of it, sick of guys like these, stupid and bullying.

One of the nice things about books as opposed to television and movies to some extent is it's not a passive entertainment. People really do get involved, and they do create, and they do have their own visions of what different characters look like and what should happen. It's great - it means their brains are working.

It was a little weird that they were friends. But then, maybe freaks just tended to find each other.