Alana – still dressed as a pirate- chambers over the counter like that evil Japanese ghost in the Ring, knocking over the child-size popcorn of some little kid, who starts to cry. The pink-pigtailed girl knows something crazy is going on, but she doesn’t yet understand it has anything to do with her. Not until Alana has grabbed Tyler by his black button-down shirt and pushed him hard into the Icee machine, which begins to stream cherry-red Icee onto the counter.

Then I’ll just tell you that it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Blame is just a way to keep score, and adults don’t play games like that.

And that means you get to choose what you want to do with your life, instead of life choosing for you.

This is the twenty-first century. The oceans are rising. Mad dictators have access to nuclear weapons. Corporatism and the dumbing down of the media have destroyed the very foundations of democracy. Anyone who isn’t afraid is a moron.” There.

They said no man was an island, and Anita figured that was probably true. But women were; they had to be. And even if someone bothered to sail over and disembark, he’d soon discover that there was always a castle at the center of the island, surrounded by a deep moat, with a rickety drawbridge and archers manning the battlements and a big pot of oil posed above the gate, ready to boil alive anyone who dared to cross the threshold.

He was one of those guys who got mystical and hazy when he was high, and his conversation with the pizza place was one for the ages: “Do we want pepperoni? Oh, man, I don’t even know. Hold on. Guys, do we want pepperoni? No, we don’t pepperoni, even though I have no idea why, because pepperoni is delicious. Actually, I’m going to ask one more time. Guys, do we really not want pepperoni? No? Man, that’s CRAZY.

The popular shall become unpopular. The freak shall inherit the Earth.

Life isn’t sugarcoated. Why should coffee be?

People don’t like getting older, but they do like changing.

She looked up toward the sky, toward the implacable sparkle of good old Ardor, and saw that the two of them – she and the asteroid – were caught up I a battle of wills. In that moment, she stopped being afraid of it, even dared it to come, because she knew thre was mo way it could crave death as much as she craved life.