There was a hole inside her, and it twisted.

Boys always get the best eyelashes; it's like some kind of cosmic law. And half-breed kids get some kind of extra help there from genetics, too.

Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?

White and scrubbed, antique brass fixtures and a skylight letting in a flood of sunshine. Wow. You could get a tan standing around in the shower, for Christ's sake.

I looked like a ghost. And I should know. I’ve seen a few.

I'd kind of expected that kids who knew about the Real World wouldn't act like jock dipwads. Guess I was wrong.

To my everlasting relief, he’d also stopped with the starch a few years back . The military made him big on spray starch, but I point-blank refused to touch the stuff after a while. He finally gave up doing it himself, and I manfully restrained myself from pointing out that the world didn’t explode when he did. And they say maturity is just for adults.