″‘Could you just call me Pigeon?’ he asked the teacher when she read his name.
‘Does your mother call you Pigeon?’
‘No.’
‘Then to me you are Paul.’
...
‘Nathan Sutter,’ the teacher read.
‘My mother never calls me Nathan.’
‘Is it Nate?’
‘She calls me Honeylips.‘”
″‘Are you her boyfriend?’
...
‘No, I’m her fiancé.’ Nate said.
‘We’ve been promised to each other since birth,’ Summer added.
‘Our wedding isn’t until March.‘”
″‘Nate, why don’t you go outside for a while? I saw some kids playing out there.’
‘But I don’t know them.’
‘Then go get acquainted. When I was your age, I was friends with whoever happened to be out roaming the neighborhood.’
‘Sounds like a good way to get stabbed by a hobo,’ Nate grumbled.
‘You know what I mean.‘”
“There was something just slightly off in Vince’s bright, Asian smile. Like he had learned to smile from a picture book. Even when he made the required dirty put-down jokes with the cops, nobody got mad at him. Nobody laughed, either, but that didn’t stop him. He kept making all the correct ritual gestures, but he always seemed to be faking. That’s why I liked him, I think. Another guy pretending to be human, just like me.”
″‘Hi kids,’ Ricky yelled, coming at them and grabbing their hair. ‘Let me warm my hands.’
‘Joke’, Rachel said. They had stopped being amused by remarks about their red hair. But they could not be offended by Ricky. He was too good-humoured.”
“I don’t know. I don’t actually remember anything from before the surgery.”
His eyebrows rose, his blue eyes sucking in all the light of the room. “The cybernetic opetation?”
“No, the sex change.”
The doctor’s smile faltered.
“I’m joking.”
″‘Are the Oompa Loompas really joking, Grandpa?’ asked Charlie. ‘Of course they’re joking,’ answered Grandpa Joe. ‘They must be joking. At least I hope they’re joking. Don’t you?‘”