Crookfinger Forest grew to the edge of town – vast, wild and ancient. The townsfolk avoided it. There were rumours about what was in there – wild boar, wolves, rough woodcutters who didn’t was, probably poisonous snakes and, of course, that Red Witch woman.
There was a worrying slither and plopping sound. My left boob felt worryingly light.
I looked down at Mike’s plate. There appeared to be two chicken breasts. One a lot more silicone-y than the other.
There was deathly silence.
Everyone was staring at me. Or more specifically my left boob. Or sudden lack thereof.
This was definitely the first time this many people had noticed my boobs and contrary to my expectations I was not enjoying it.
My chicken filet ex-boob-enhancer slithered down slightly into Mike’s gravy.
‘OH MY GOD, IT’S A BOOBIE!’ he screamed.
“And during, I realized that the labels didn’t matter, because when two people feel that sort of pull toward each other, it just works, and the only label that mattered was that I was in love. Totally, fully, ecstatically.”
“I hate this feeling. Like I’m here, but I’m not. Like someone cares. But they don’t. Like I belong somewhere else, anywhere but here, and escape lies just past that snowy window, cool and crisp as the February air.”
“We may be the only ones who think that braving a series of crumbling death traps is proof of good decision making.”
“I was thinking,” he murmurs. “There’a billion different versions of you out there, in a trillion different universes. And I still can’t get over how lucky I am that, out of all those versions, you’re the one that’s mine.”
“I can’t go back. just like with everything else in my life. All I can do at this point is keep going forward. So I do.”
The ghost chuckled. “Oh, goodness, don’t be frightened of David. He wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“But he ate you,” Spaulding blurted out.
Mr. Radzinsky flapped a hand at him. “Shh! He bears a lot of guilt about that. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been suffering from an undiagnosed mood disorder.”
“The older she got, the more human her parents seemed, and that was one of the scariest things in the world. She missed being little, when they were the all-knowing gods of her world, but at the same time, seeing them as human made it easier to see herself that way, too.”
I stare at Vin in amazement. He sounds exactly like Ryan when he’s talking to Crenshaw. Did I miss something in my meager childhood? Was there a book I was supposed to read? The Complete Idiot’s Guide to King Arthur’s Court? It seems like silly me has been reading any survival manual or How To book I could get my hands on while all these Lost Boys were reading Lunacy: A Visitor’s Guide.