Nick spoke for the first time. "Can I go to the nurse's office too?" Ms. Popplewell looked at him It obviously took her only one look to decide. "No." "I'm traumatized too," Nick claimed, his voice completely flat. "He's a delicate flower," Alan said under his breath.

How do you deal with it?" Kami asked Jared. "The laughing at nothing and occasionally stopping dead in your tracks." "I have a system where when I stop, I lean casually against something," Jared told her. "It makes people think I'm a bad boy. Or possibly that I have a bad back.

The drab brown front of the house made it look as if it had been built from rusty spare parts. Someone always put lace curtains in the windows of dreary houses, and Nick was unsurprised to see the curtains making their attempts in every window of this place. There was a china garden gnome on the doorstep, wearing a desperate, crazy smile. "It's not so bad," Alan said. "You never take me nice places anymore, baby." said Nick, and was mildly gratified by Alan's ring of laughter, like a living bell that had been caught by surprise when it was struck.

Down the well," Angela repeated, and had to go sit down and hold on to her letter opener. It was in the shape of a dagger. Angela said holding it soothed her; seeing Angela hold it did not soothe Kami.

I don’t know what I saw. It could’ve been a hallucination. You get those from sniffing glue.” “You’ve never sniffed glue!” “I’ve smelled glue,” Jamie said after a pause. “In art class.

Nick looked vaguely homicidal, but that was sort of his default expression.

If you weren’t there, how do you know someone pushed her?” Sergeant Kenn asked. “Well …,” said Jared. “And what were you doing, running through a strange town at night?” “I was jogging?” Jared offered. “Without your shirt or your shoes?” “Uh,” said Jared.