What about a hoverboard?" "It's waiting on the roof, of course." Dr. Cable snorted. "What is it about you miscreants and those things?

She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.

Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.

Come on, it's almost midnight. Let's go watch them cut the cake.

What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.

Tally, do you ever suffer from sudden flashes of anger or euphoria, countersocial impulses, or feelings of superiority?

Life doesn't come with an instruction manual.