Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posie. Ashes ashes, we all fall down. Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people... Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense... How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree? Because I ate the kid who made it up.

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.

With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

When the term "machine gun" enters common parlance, the word "machine" becomes much more sinister.

Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun." "We are ugly.

However stupid the choice seemed, Shay had made it with her eyes open, and had respected Tally's choice to stay.