Cash or check?” he said cheekily. Even the dullest Ohio girls knew that bit of lingo: Kiss now or kiss later? “Bank’s closed, pal.

So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines.

I shan't ever understand your willingness to lie down and die," Felicity bars. "If you won't at least try to fight, I have no sympathy for you.

Wow, you're awesome and The universe loves a winner, so the universe must really love you!

Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore... and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more.

Evie hadn’t always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she’d cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O’NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers.

In a world like this one, only the random makes sense.