What's with what you're wearing?" Griggs asks while we stand outside waiting for the others. "It's pretty hideous, isn't it?" I say. "Don't force me to look at it," he says. "It's see-through." That kills conversation for a couple of seconds.

And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you're watching someone die.

So between you and me," I tell Justine on the phone that night, "we're either bitchy or stupid." "Oh God," she moans. "Everyone thinks I'm an idiot." "Thanks!

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of miles away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, 'What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?' and my father said, 'Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,' and that was the last thing he ever said.

It's not that I like you least [...] it's that I feared you most. The reginita taught me to like you. There was a strange joy to her that lifted my spirits. But you, Quintana of Charyn, you made me love you.

It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love.

Your friends are at the house.' I sit up, straight. 'Who'? 'I don't know. Weird people. The Sullivan girl, whose father got the Gosford police to pick you up.' 'Siobhan?' 'And another one who's making cups of tea for everyone, and keeping the boy who's telling Luca fart jokes away from the girl who says he's "the last bastion of patriarchal poor taste".' 'Justine, Thomas and Tara.' And the drug fiend, Jimmy, is keeping Mia calm and the Trombal boy's rung about ten times. I don't like his manner on the phone.' 'You won't like any guy's manner on the phone.