I could just barely see the dark curve of his shoulder, and something about the shape it made, the gesture it suggested, filled me with a sort of fierce, awful affection.

Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches that had been cut into circles for a fancy tea party.

It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.

I don't know if I'd want to be comforted, if I'm being honest. If I'm being forced to eat soot, I want to know that somewhere else in the world, someone else has to eat soot as well. I want to know that soot tastes terrible. I don't want to be told that soot's good for the digestion. And of course, by soot, I mean beans.

I never knew there were so many different ways to say good-bye.

It's a strange thing, to be talked about instead of talked to.

Inside the house, I turned on the kitchen light, revealing the photographs stuck every which way all over the cabinets, and then switched on the hall light. In my head, I heard Beck say to my small nine-year-old self, 'Why do we need every light in the house on? Are you signaling to aliens?