Favorite Lines
~ “My mom isn’t particularly fond of my leather jacket, but I swear I didn’t wear it to make her mad or anything. I’m not resentful of the fact that she decided to marry a guy who lives three thousand miles away, forcing me to leave school in the middle of my sophomore year; abandon the best – and pretty much only – friend I’ve had since kindergarten; leave the city I’ve been living in for all of my sixteen years. Oh, no. I’m not a bit resentful” (p. 2).
~ “Doc, Andy’s youngest kid, is twelve, but he’s going on forty. He spent almost the entire wedding reception telling me about alien mutilation, and how Area 51 is just this big cover-up by the American government, which doesn’t want us to know that We Are Not Alone” (p. 4).
~ “My mom had his body cremated, and she put his ashes in an antique German beer tankard. You know, that kind with the lid. My dad had always really liked beer” (p. 26).
~ “It isn’t often I gun into a ghost who also happens to be a hottie, but this guy…boy, he must have been something back when he was live because here he was dead and I was already trying to catch a peek at what was going on beneath the white shirt he was wearing very much open at the throat, exposing quite a bit of chest, and some of his stomach, too. Do ghosts have six-packs? This was not something I had ever had occasion – or a desire – to explore before” (p. 35).
~ “He had turned a little and put a boot up onto the pale blue cushion that covered the window seat, and I had seen definitive proof that yes, ghosts could indeed have six-packs. His abdominal muscles were deeply ridged, and covered with a light dusting of black hair. I swallowed. Hard” (p. 36).
~ “It was probably the first time he’d been touched by anyone in a century and a half. That kind of thing can blow a guy’s mind. Especially a dead guy” (p. 41).
~ “They don’t have malls in New York City, but Gina used to love to take the PATH train to this one in New Jersey. Usually after about an hour, I’d develop sensory overload, and have to sit down in the This Can’t Be Yogurt and sip and herbal tea until I calmed down” (p. 46).
~ “My poor mom. She always wanted a nice, normal teenage daughter. Instead, she got me” (p. 49).
~ “Carmel might not have had a Bagel Bob’s, but Manhattan sure didn’t have no beach” (p. 57).
~ “Hello? Were you out there just now? You think I was just supposed to stand there and talk that beam into not crushing that guy’s skull?” (p. 89).
~ “Are you…are you stalking me?” (p. 107).
~ “Try and stop me, cadaver breath” (p. 108).
~ “It was Mr. Walden’s classroom. With the moonlight flooding into it, I could see his handwriting on the chalkboard, and the big poster of Bob Dylan, his favorite poet, on the wall” (p. 114).
~ “Geesh. It was a good thing Father Serra was good and dead. I had a feeling that statue would have completely embarrassed him” (p. 116).
~ “I don’t like being touched under normal circumstances, and I especially don’t like being touched by ghosts. And I especially don’t like being touched by ghosts who have hands as big and tendony and strong-looking as Jesse’s” (p. 131).
~ “Why should I care what some dead cowboy thought of me? But I wasn’t about to admit to him that I’d never had a boyfriend. You just don’t go around saying things like that to totally hot guys, even if they’re dead” (p. 139).
~ “Had Jesse died not in a gunfight, as I’d originally assumed, but in some sort of lovers’ quarrel” I don’t know why the thought disturbed me so much, but it did. It kept me awake for about three whole minutes” (p. 145).
~ “I ran so fast that later, Sister Mary Claire, the track coach, asked me if I’d like to try out for the team” (p. 158).
~ “Adam stood by the door, holding it open for me. ‘You’re the new girl. The new girl gets to sit in the front.’ ‘Yeah,’ Cee Cee said from the depths of the backseat, ‘until you refuse to sleep with him. Then he’ll relegate you to the backseat, too’” (p. 169).
~ “I’m pretty good at figuring out what dead people are thinking, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of the living yet” (p. 178).
~ “So I committed what I’m sure must be some kind of mortal sin. I lied to a priest. Good thing I’m not Catholic” (p. 186).
~ “Back in New York, we used to sit in the park and watch the undercover cops arrest drug dealers. But that wasn’t anywhere near as nice as this, singing happily on a beach as the sun went down” (p. 192).
~ “I actually believed, just then, that everything was going to be all right. Boy, was I ever in denial” (p. 193).
~ “He slapped my hand away. ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Well at least nobody’ll be callin’ me a fag hag tomorrow.’ ‘Oh, sweetie,’ I said. I reached out and tweaked the cheek I’d just patted. ‘You’ll never have to worry about people calling you that. They call you much worse things’” (p. 195).
~ “How is it that I’d nearly been smothered to death, and yet I could sit there an notice things like my stepbrother’s abdominal muscles a few minutes later?” (p. 217).
~ “The whole way home, my new big brother Jake lectured me. Apparently, he thought I’d been at the school in the middle of the night as part of some sort of gang initiation. I did you not. He was really very indignant about the whole thing. He wanted to know what kind of friends I thought these people were, leaving me to die under a pile of roofing tiles. He suggested that if I were bored or in need of a thrill, I should take up surfing because, and I quote, ‘If you’re gonna have your head split open, it might as well be while you’re riding a wave, dude’” (p. 218).
~ “I hung up the phone feeling a little over-whelmed. It isn’t every day a girl gets elected vice president of a class she’s been in for less than a week” (p. 235).
Back~Home