Quotes from Laura McNeal

Amiel was looking at me with the kind of interest that made my mouth dry up. I was Braille and his eyes were fingers.

Tu' eres de dos mundos." He was wrong, of course. You can only belong to one world at a time.

Inside the house, near the hearth, Amiel had built a sort of fire pit with rocks. It was a safer place to cook than most campsites, really, because there was concrete all around, and I longed to be there when he had the fire going, when we could be cowgirl and cowboy and pretend we weren't a few miles from two million people.

This time when we kissed, he didn't pull away, and I was close enough to his mouth for him to whisper what the tiny old vaquero had said a long time ago, the part of being of two worlds. "Tu eres de dos mundos." I closed both of my eyes, the blue one and the brown one, so I could be in just one world, his...

On September 13, we were the kindling, and a monstrous god leaned over us to breathe. Clouds melted, brush trembled, and the ocean burned white like molten glass...I was hoping, like everyone else who lay awake listening to the wind, that no pyromaniacs were out there, trembling in thrall beneath the god monster, reaching for a match.

Greenie Coombs became my best friend the last summer of making things up. We were in fourth grade, way too old for playing with Barbies, which is why we were so close: we had to protect our secret.

I had reached the end if the trail and the dead end of Willow Glen Road, which meant I had a long way to go, most of it uphill. I heard a bicycle, and because sometimes the world gives you what you want, the bicycle that streaked into view held Amiel.

My whole life reminded me of how it felt to ride, when Greenie and I were little, in the back of Greenie's mother's car, an ancient Pacer with a seat that faced backward and left us staring at places we'd already been and drivers who didn't want to make eye contact. I was facing the wrong direction, but time still went forward, gliding toward destinations I couldn't see or choose.

I had no idea whether they played hide-and-seek in Mexico. Still, it was a game that let me be confident instead of self-conscious and confused, so I reached out my hand to touch the nearest part of him, which was his knee. "Tag," I said. "You're it." If he had run, I could have chased him and known what I was doing, because I know how to be eight, nine, ten, and eleven...

Kids in my history class pulled out their cell phones and turned them on. I did the same, and as we all lifted our heavy backpacks, the doors of every classroom clanked open and out flowed the river of students with phones clapped to their ears. Soon the quad was a sea of backpacks and people staring nervously into space as they had conversations with people who weren't there.

Wanting to play God for your own private purposes, whatever they are, might be what getting greedy is

the April day when the Americans mounted the stone steps and pushed the door buzzer, rain had fallen for eleven of the last eleven days, and Aldine McKenna was waiting,