She felt like every cell in her body was vomiting, like everyone in the coffee shop was talking about what a failure she had become, like her lungs were filled with charcoal dust and blood.

And, despite Min’s best efforts, they talked about Dad. Ruthie cried. Min wouldn’t. It was his fucking decision. But listening a few minutes longer to her sister, whose voice wobbled with the panic and despair of the discarded, she found herself crying fo

Snow was melting in buckets and rivulets carried water over winter-beaten brick, concrete, and asphalt. Walking down the glistening sidewalk with his girl next to him, Alex felt as if he had emerged into a world flushed by some momentous change: a victory

Mo comforted himself with the thought he was dead—that he had actually died last night and everything since Min went to get him a Fanta was some kind of “Occurrence at Owl Creek” thing:

His fantasies had been failing for months now, and tonight the stench of booze was too strong. It brought him back down to the world of cocktails and cockroaches, of floss and Rolaids, of Prozac, athlete’s foot, and bright orange cheese. He had no powers

"My dad said the universe was God trying to kill himself….” he said.

Now, eons later whenever we see a plastic bag, which looks so like our ancient aquatic ally, we still have that vestigial impulse to squish our head into it.