Favorite Lines
~You want my statement? Okay, here's my statement: It's all Ruth's fault. (p. 1)
~On the plus side of this I now know the play Our Town by heart. The minus side is, who the hell wants to know Our Town by heart?
~Okay, in the first place, she was wearing black leggins, this great big EPHS sweatshirt, and jogging shoes. Not so bad, right? Wait. She'd coupled this ensemble with sweat bands - I am not kidding - around her head and on her wrists. She also had this big bottle of water handing in a net sling from one shoulder. I mean, you could tell she thought she looked like an Olympic athlete, but what she actually looked like was a lunatic housewife who'd just gotten Get Fit With Oprah from the Book-of-the-Month Club, or something. (p. 13).
~Almost every girl in Indiana who dissapears gets found, eventually, half-naked and decomposing in a cornfield. But then, you guys already know that, don't you? (p. 18)
~"You better lie down," Ruth said. "You better put your head between your knees." "Why?" I asked her. "So I can kiss my butt good-bye?" (p. 25)
~I used to pretend I was a lighthouse keeper and the dormer was my lighthouse, and I'd look out for boats about to crash on our front lawn, which I pretended was a treacherous beach. Hey, come on. I was a little kid back then, okay? And, in the words of Mr. Goodhart, even then I had issues. (p. 31)
~My mom, besides frequently talking in a fake French accent, also goes around quoting from Shakespearean plays and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. On second thought, maybe she's not so much like other people's moms after all. (p. 35)
~I told Ruth that, yes, I had to wear one of my mom's gay outfits, even though gay is the wrong word for it, because all the gay people I know are really cool and would sooner drop dead than wear something made out of gingham, except on Halloween. But whatever. (p. 41)
~My dad's been kind of weird about my boobs, ever since I got some. I think he's afraid they'll get in the way of my swing when I haul off a right hook at somebody. (p. 52)
~Douglas doesn't have to go to church anymore. Instead, he stays home and reads comic books. I know Douglas is sick and all, but I wouldn't mind staying home on Sunday morning and reading comic books. Or watching TV, even. But I never tried to kill myself, so I have to go to church. And I have to go in a dress that matches my mother's. It's enought to make a girl think there might not actually be a God. (p. 90)
~God, I can't believe boys. It's a wonder anybody gets married at all. (p. 92)
~I mean, I never paid much attention in church, but one thing that had managed to sink in was the fact that you're supposed to do nice things for people. You don't do them because you expect to get paid for them. You do it because it's the right thing to do. Like punching Jeff Day, for instance. That had been the right thing to do. (p. 97)
~All my mother has ever wanted was to have a normal family. Though what's so normal about two women wearing the same homemade dress, I cannot begin to imagine. (p. 97)
~And Rob, well, he has one of those smiles. You know the kind. Then again, maybe you don't. I forgot who I was writing this for. (p. 101)
~No, he dropped me off, as promised, on the corner, and I walked the rest of the way home, cursing the fact that I have to live in this backward state with its backward laws. I mean, a sixteen-year-old girl can't date an eighteen-year-old boy in the state of Indiana, but it's perfectly okay for first cousins to marry at any age. (p. 106)
~And considering that he had one kid who was a schizo, and another who was basically a social leper, even if he had gotten into Harvard, well, I guess my dad was kind of stoked that at least one of his kids was making good, you know? (p. 121)
~Anyways, ont eh way home, my dad agreed to break the news to Mom, but not tell anybody else - I made him swear - and I agreed not to keep any more secrets from him. I still didn't tell him about Rob, though, because that was a secret I strongly suspected the FBI didn't have a lead on, so I probably wasn't going to almost get arrested for it. Plus I was way more worried about my mom's reaction to finding out about Rob than the story of me and milk-carton kids. (p. 129)
~When I woke up the next morning, I was kind of cranky, on account of Rob preferring not to have to go to jail rather than spend time in my company. (p. 141)
~Oh yeah, I'd been touched by the finger of God, all right. The question was, which finger? (p. 149).
~I ducked my head, working my combination. Twenty-one, the age I'd like to be. Sixteen, the age I am. Thirty-five, he age I'll be before Rob Wilkins decides I am mature enough to go out with. (p. 151)
~Having superpowers was turning out to be more of a responsibility than I liked. (p. 162)
~I told Sean to try to sit up tall in his seat. I was hoping he could pass, maybe, for a scrawny freshman. And I could pass for a loser who'd date a freshman. (p. 184)
~All my jumping into it had accomplished was that it made Colonel Jenkins really mad. It was worth it. (p. 202)
~I had never had fresh eggs before, and I was kind of worried they'd have some half-formed chicken fetus in them, but they didn't. (p. 238)
~Men. I swear I just don't get it. (p. 240)
~He kissed me back for a while, and it was just like in Snow White when all the woodland animals come out and start singing, and Prince Charming puts her up on the horse. For about a minute it was like that. I mean, my heart was singing just like one of those damned squirrels. (p. 246)
~Now that I've read back over this statement, I'm not so sure anymore that all of this is Ruth's fault. The fact that I got struck by lightning, maybe. On the other hand, Ruth never would have wanted to walk home in the first place if it hadn't been for Jeff telling her she was as fat as Elvis. So maybe it's all Jeff's fault. Yeah, I think it is. Jeff Day's fault, I mean. (p. 264)
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