Quotes from Maureen Johnson

but English nachos are very bad. Do not eat English nachos. I swear to God I've seen them put baked beans on them. Fish and chips, however, are very good. That's not a stereotype. That's fact. And that's what we are getting.

You'll like it here, she said. Pix is nice. She's an archaeologist? And anthropologist. She collects teeth. Who doesn't? he said.

just mean that ours was the kind of town where bad things could happen and everything could remain under the surface. Something about it always felt . . . personal. Local. Something about finding that spot in the woods, being there at the right time, something about the timing of it all.

This is a camp. For children. Which means we have a duty of care. I'm responsible for every single person on these grounds. No strangers around the kids. No people kayaking at night on the lake.

Her texts indicated she had been spending a lot more time in the maintenance shed building since Stevie had been gone, and that she was getting much more serious with Vi Harper-Tomo.

I liked you from the first moment I saw you, when you looked like you wanted to punch me in the face for just being alive. That probably says something dark about me. And I think you like me because I annoy you. Both of us have real problems, but maybe we should make our weird personalities work for us.

Susan Marks was in her midseventies, and despite a little stiffness as she stood, she had the look of someone who did an hour of yoga a day to warm up for the second hour of yoga she did each day.

There's more monitoring now. Kids don't play unsupervised. Everyone has a phone. Back then, even little kids went out to play on their own, sometimes all day. Kids rode their bikes all around town. I was considered a hardass for doing spot bed checks and having a lot of rules. So people in town were very good to me after it happened

She's not from anywhere, so if she's nowhere, it's like she's home.

What were the seventies even about? Was it all smoking and listening to this kind of stuff and riding around in huge cars without wearing seat belts? This was the song everyone liked?

Some pain medications are very strong," Janelle said. "Isn't it possible that she was just high? That she was saying things that had no bearing on reality?

Trying is the first step to whatever comes next.

Rory, do you want to go live in the sky? On a Pegasus?

If Stevie was being completely honest with herself—and she preferred not to be—David's concern felt very good. He was really worried about her, possibly more worried than she was about herself. He cared. It sent warm bubbles of pleasure through her system.

Even if Shawn and Paul wanted to team up to murder people they thought had wronged them, there seemed little chance that the woman she'd just met would have had any part in that.

At the same time, it wasn't exactly fair that, once again, David had the world handed to him on a silver platter. People like David didn't have to make their own luck. It was fair to bet that no one was going to offer Stevie a free ride to school in England, and she'd solved a murder.

When people at school looked online for party outfits and looks, she was genuinely confused. There were people who seemed not only to understand these things, but to accomplish them. A striped top, a wide-brimmed hat, shorts for that "special beach weekend." Lipsticks for fall, jeans that were perfect for a hayride, pendant earrings for that holiday party and snowball fight. Who lived these lives?

It was the kind of job that needed you more than you needed it.

She went from feeling completely connected to him and swimming in the warm waters of happy hormones, to a cold, frightened feeling.

Is there kissing?" she asked. "I hate you." "You can't write anything?" "Let's just say that I needed to have Moonbeam fight something and the only thing I could come up with was called the Pulsating Norb. It's like a wall that jiggles.

Okay. How about detectives? What about Sherlock Holmes?" Stevie rolled her eyes. "What's wrong with Sherlock Holmes?" Janelle asked. "Nothing is wrong with Sherlock Holmes," Stevie said. "But he's not a costume. He's . .

On all crime shows, it's usually the third person the cops interview. It's the one you sort of think it is. In life, the murderer is anyone. The reasons, the methods, the circumstances—the paths to becoming a murderer are as numerous as the stars. Understanding this is the first step to finding a murderer. You have to shut down the voices in your mind that say, "It has to be this person." Murderers aren't a type. They're anyone.

There's really only one reason you'd all be so specific and all tell that same story over and over in the same way. It's because it wasn't true.

Instead, he gestured to the DJ, who deemed Single Ladies to be the correct jam for this particular car crash of a moment.