Don't cry." "How can I not?" I asked him. "You just said you loved me." "Well, why else did you think all of this was happening?" He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. "The Furies wouldn't be trying to kill you if I didn't love you." "I didn't know," I said. Tears were trickling down my cheeks, but I did nothing to try to stop them. His shirt was absorving most of them. "You never said anything about it. Every time I saw you, you just acted so... wild." "How was I supposed to act?" he asked. "You kept doing things like throwing tea in my face.

Mr. Greer timed all our speeches with an oven timer. Things were nothing at Tribeca Alternative, considered one of Manhattan's finest prep schools, if not high tech.

No matter how nice the company one might be with, however, it is never pleasant to have a rifle pointed at one's back.

It was also, however, a favorite place for novices to stand and wait for innocent students to slip up by talking too loudly between classes. No novice has ever been created that could keep Gina quiet, however.

I was the kind of kid who couldn't really stop making up stories during class. I didn't do very well academically because I was always drawing these little doodles in the margins of my notebooks and I wasn't bringing home the best grades.

„Everyone wants to believe that there’s something else – something great – waiting for them on the other side. Paradise. Valhalla. Heaven. Their next – hopefully less horrible – life.

How is it that I'd nearly been smothered to death, and yet I could sit there and notice things like my stepbrother's abdominal muscles a few minutes later?