I've been waiting for you all night and day,' she said. Froi shivered. He realised that the words came from Quintana the ice maiden. Realised, as he felt his face heating up, that the idea of this Quintana waiting for him with excitement spoke to parts of him he believed to be dormant. And then she winked. 'Did I do that right?' she asked. Her smile was lopsided and he saw a glimpse of the teeth. And Froi imagined that he would follow her to the ends of the earth.

Come here,” she says. “No, you come here.” “I said it first.” “Rock paper scissors.” “No. Because you’ll do nerdy calculations and work out what I chose the last six times and then you’ll win.” Will pushes away from the table and his hand snakes out and he pulls her toward him and Tom figures that Will was always going to go to her first.

Promise me you'll never stop dreaming.

She asked me what type of contraceptive I use. Underwear. Keeping it on prevents pregnancy.

It's my birthday today. I'm not 17 anymore. The 17 Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth. But what she failed to mention is that you keep on learning truths after 17 and I want to keep on learning truths till the day I die.

Between now and when we graduate next year there are at least ten weeks' holiday and five random public holidays. There's email and if you manage to get down to the town, there's text messaging and mobile phone calls. If not, the five minutes you get to speak to me on your communal phone is better than nothing. There are the chess nerds who want to invite you to our school for the chess comp next March and there's this town in the middle, planned by Walter Burley Griffin, where we can meet up and protest against our government's refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty." -Jonah Griggs

You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.