Kendare Blake

“You make me want things that I can't have.”

“What are you going to fill it with?" she asks. "Holy water or something?" "Probably Dasani," Thomas replies.”

“Girls, on the other hand, have always come easy. I don't know why that is, exactly. Maybe it's the outsider vibe and a well-placed brooding look. Maybe it's something I think I see sometimes in the mirror, something that reminds me of my father. Or maybe I'm just damn easy on the eyes.”

“You’re sure you didn’t leave? Didn’t try to explore Thunder Bay again, maybe go down to the park and, I don’t know, dismember some poor jogger?”

“I finally find a girl I could really be with, maybe the only girl in the world, and I had what? Two months with her? It's not enough. After everything she went through - everything I went through - we deserve more than that. Or maybe we don't. Anyway, life doesn't work like that. It doesn't care about fair and unfair.”

“This is my favorite part of the hunting. Getting to know them . Hearing their legends. I want them to be as large in my mind as they can possibly be, and when I see them I don't want to be disappointed.”

“It's shitty I guess. They're my friends. But... everything I want to talk about I can't say to them. It feels so separate, like I've touched something that's taken the color out of me.”

“I had a million different dreams but none of them was stronger than the rest. In the end they probably would have paralyzed me.”

“Anna's eyes soften, and the stubborn tears begin to recede. The way she stands, the way she breathes, I know she wants to come closer. New knowledge fills up the air between us and neither of us wants to breathe it in.”

“The things that your eyes see plainly and cant forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination.”

“I’m just saying it doesn’t always have to be spirits and magic. Sometimes hauntings are in your mind. It doesn’t make them less real.”

“I wish this knife was good for something besides death, that I could cut through time and walk into that house, into that kitchen where he trapped her, and get her out of there. I would make sure she had the future she should have had.”

“It will not be easy for him to see her dead, should they become close. But she has so few friends. She cannot turn one away.”

“Using for a noble purpose is still using.”

“No matter how far I go, I'm still your person. We stand together now.”

“I make my way to her table, seeing her eyes growing wider as I do. Ten or so other girls probably just developed instantaneous crushes on me, because they see Carmel likes me. Or so the sociologist in my brain says.”

“I hate telling people this. I never know exactly how my voice is going to sound saying it, and I hate the stricken looks they get on their faces when they don't know what to say back.”

“The rhythm of the footsteps, the sound of whatever is coming down the ladder is driving both me and my mom steadily toward peeing our pants.”

“As special as it is to listen to your friends argue over whether or not you have a mental illness,I'm starting to get the urge to go back to class.”

“You fuck - you ate my cat!”