The one reality was this: He was home. How badly he wanted to stay.

I wasn't sure if I admired him for feeling everything so hard and fiercely, or if I was contemptuous of him for having so much emotion that he had to spill it out every window of the house.

My most memorable adventure was investigating the chalk cliffs in Yorkshire. While clambering over kelp-covered boulders half-covered by the sea, I fell and smashed my tail bone on one of them.

My mother always said that I was born out of a bottle of vinegar instead of born from a womb and that she and my father bathed me in sugar for three days to wash it off. I try to behave, but I always go back to the vinegar.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master. This was the important thing. It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.

Right, sure. Because there's no girls in politics! I have no interest. Voting? What? I forgot my apron. I think I ought to be in the kitchen right now, actually. My rolling pin-

What's that?' Beck shoved his back ineffectually against the glass door, suffering under the weight of a huge box. 'Your brian.' I already have a brain.' If you did, you'd have opened the door for me.' I shot him a dark look and let him shove against the door a moment longer before I ducked under his arms to push it open. 'What is it really?' Schoolbooks. We're going to educate you properly, so you don't grow up to be an idiot.; I remembered by intrigued by the idea of school-in-a-box, just-add-water-and-Sam.