Teachers loved to say people had potential; that's what teachers did to keep themselves from getting canned. What were they supposed to say-I'm sorry, your kid has no promise whatsoever? She's utterly mediocre in every way?

The words kept coming and he could not stop them, not while Callie was standing there so indecipherably, and so he was going to keep talking until he used up all the words there were and then no one would be able to talk to anyone else anymore and then all anyone would have left were one another's unintelligible faces, and maybe some weird gesturing, too, and it would be all Oscar's fault.

It’s a plié. You do it on all the positions. It’s very good for dramatic moments.

She'd been to Narnia, Wonderland, Hogwarts, Dictionopolis. She had tessered, fallen through the rabbit hole, crossed the ice bridge into the unknown world beyond.

Something was wrong with him - and down deep he'd known his whole life. Maybe the wards had even said something. (You are not right, boy.) Maybe the other children had. (What's wrong with you?) Maybe it had happened while he watched one child after another walk off with a family from the Eastern Villages, with a merchant or a farmer. (You know no one will ever take you, right?) Maybe he'd even said it to himself.

Charlotte sighed inwardly. She knew her mother was serious when she started referring to shellfish. What did that mean, anyway? What's so great about the world being your oyster? Does that mean it's really hard to open, and when you do, you have something slimy and gross on the inside?