Caroline B. Cooney · 192 pages
Rating: (48K votes)
“She was a mind floating in an ocean of confusion.”
“She had gradually changed her name. "Jane" was too dull. Last year, she'd added a "y", becoming Jayne, which had more personality.”
“I have no beliefs,” said her mother. “Only hopes.”
“The only evil is that I don't mind that it happened.”
“If she dreamed, she did not remember when she awoke.”
“I guess you've grown up anyway, Janie. Even with all the bricks I put on your head to keep you little.”
“She had a sense of herself being brain dead: running on tubes and machines.”
“It was like crawling on glass. No matter how firmly she resolved not to think such stupid things, she thought them.”
“Her parents kissed her on each side. Her mother took both her hands now and held them against her cheek, as if in prayer. “We tried everything to get Hannah out. We took her on long vacations, we sent her to live with my cousin in Atlanta, we tried traditional church. But she went to California to join the temple commune. There was nothing we could do. The law wasn’t on our side, Hannah wasn’t on our side. The cult even had armed bodyguards to keep parents like us from snatching our children back.”
“father knocked on her door. “Kitten? May I come”
“I liked how he gently squeezed my thigh just above my knee as we idled at a crosswalk.”
“Where there is an unreconciled quarrel, everybody suffers”
“her all the way to the crossroads, and I think it more than adequate.” Everyone gaped at her like she was mad. “Our goal,” she continued, “was to distract the king, was it not? To distract the king and those who serve him, to send them on a merry chase. It would have been nice to meet the lady, and to use her captivity to our advantage, but our first intention was to empty the tombs of its guards, yes?” Immerez calmed and nodded, and Sarge let out a breath of relief. Karigan’s own thoughts were awhirl. They kidnapped Estora just to distract the king? To empty the tombs? What were they up to? “Who are you?” she asked the woman. The woman did not answer, but withdrew a pendant from beneath her chemise. It was crudely made of iron, but shaped into a design Karigan knew well: a dead tree. “Second Empire,” she whispered. She glanced at the onlookers. “You’re all Second Empire?” Some drew out pendants like the woman’s, and others raised their hands, palms outward, to show the tattoo of the dead tree. The old woman smiled kindly”
“Everyone can look into another's heart. People just don't usually take the time to do it.”
“Whatever I have to do here, I’m ready for it. Work hard, do my homework, get an A, get back home to Bob and the kids, and back to work. Back to normal. I’m determined to recover 100 percent. One hundred percent has always been my goal in everything, unless extra credit is involved, and then I shoot higher. Thank God I’m a competitive, type A perfectionist. I’m convinced I’m going to be the best traumatic brain injury patient Baldwin has ever seen. But they won’t be seeing me for very long because I also plan to recover faster than anyone here would predict. I wonder what the record is.”
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