Just cuz yer going there and I'm staying here," I say. "It don't mean we're parting." "No," she says and I know she understands. "No, it certainly doesn't." "I ain't parting from you again," I say, still looking at our fingers. "Not even in my head.

Schooling ain't life." "Ain't it?" she says, her eyebrows raising in mock surprise.

And then a low and powerful sound rumbles thru the sky, like some giant, deep horn. A sound God would make when he wanted yer attenshun.

Flakes of white fall thru the trees and onto the road, catching on our clothes and hair. It's a silent fall and it's weird how it makes everything else seem quiet, too, like it's trying to tell you a secret, a terrible, terrible secret.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will be a man in one month’s time exactly.

This is how we are protecting you, by getting you out.

I was born into all that, all that mess, the over-crowded swamp and the over-crowded sematary and the not-crowded-enough town, so I don’t remember nothing, don’t remember a world without Noise. My pa died of sickness before I was born and then my ma died, of course, no surprises there. Ben and Cillian took me in, raised me. Ben says my ma was the last of the women but everyone says that about everyone’s ma. Ben may not be lying, he believes it’s true, but who knows?