Blue." It was Ronan's voice, for the first time, and everyone, even Helen, twisted their head towards him. His head was cocked in a way that Gansey recognized as dangerous. Something in his eyes was sharp as he stared at Blue. He asked, "Do you know Gansey?" ... Blue looked defensive under their stares. She said reluctantly. "Only his name." With his fingers loosely together, elbows on his knees, Ronan leaned forward across Adam to be closer to Blue. He could be unbelievably threatening. "And how is it," he asked," you came to know Gansey's name?

In Ronan's hand, the mask was as thin as a sheet of paper, still warm from Adam's gasped breaths. Orphan Girl buried her face in his side, her body shaking with sobs. Her tiny voice was muffled: "Tollerere me a hic, tollerere me a hic..." Take me away from here, take me away from here.

That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.

I remember being intrigued by the idea of school-in-a-box, just-add-water-and-Sam.

I had a weird, empty feeling inside me. Not a bad sort of empty. It was a sort of lack of sensation, like being in pain for a long time and then suddenly realizing that you're not anymore. It was the feeling of having risked everything to be here with a boy and then realizing that he was exactly what I wanted. Being a picture and then finding I was really a puzzle piece, once I found the piece that was supposed to fit beside me.

I try to think of something catchy to say, but there's nothing but irritation that something that was funny yo an eleven-year-old boy is still funny to a seventeen-year-old one.

Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it excape. One step of not breathing.