Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1)

by Rachel Cohn

and discover that family, like arsenic, works best in small doses … unless you prefer to die).

I preferred to hang out with the dead, dying, or desperate books—used we call them, in a way that we’d never call a person, unless we meant it cruelly.

teetotaler.

was a red Moleskine—made of neither mole nor skin, but nonetheless the preferred journal of my associates who felt the need to journal in non-electronic form.

respecting the virgin spaces

can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to be alone with me that much.

When in doubt, ingest carbs.

was definitely a boy’s scrawl: moody, foreign, and barely legible.

poetess

In fact, his exact words were, “Don’t spend it all on booze and women”—the implication being, of course, that I should spend at least some of it on booze and women.

I found myself in Outer Garments, wondering what, short of an earplug, would count as an Inner Garment.

Personally, I preferred the word bedding when it was a verb, not a noun. Can you show me the bedding section? could not compare to Are you bedding me? Seriously, are we going to bed each other?

“Get on my lap, then, big boy.”

“Well, what’s in your Amazonian hope chest?” Boomer asked. “My WHAT?” “You know, on Amazon. Your hope chest.” “You mean my wish list?” “Yeah, that.”

Such a brand of selflessness was not meant for Christmastime.

but I’m comfortable as a nobody

All this hoping for something—or someone—that’s maybe hopeless.

She got to live at Hogwarts and be friends with Harry and kiss Ron, which was supposed to happen to me.

It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.

The world was too full of wastrels and waifs,

Words failed me, insofar as I wasn’t sure I could find the words that wouldn’t fail her.