How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I wonder what feeling bad means in this particular situation. I can't imagine it's the same feeling bad as when you lend your boyfriend your favorite ultra-comfortable sweater and then find him wearing it as he says that the only feeling he can muster toward you is annoyance, and then wearing it again a week later as he walks past you in the halls, pretending you don't exist as he flirts with the one girl who had been after him the whole time you'd been going out. (9.17)
Meryn Cadell has a heartbreaking high school sweater song, appropriately called "The Sweater." She wears her crush's knitwear to school, playing it cool, only to "get a note passed to [her] by a girl in History that says 'He needs that sweater back. He forgot you put it on in the tent on Saturday and he's been looking for it.'
Ouch.
Quote #5
We hold hands as we walk through town. If anybody notices, nobody cares. I know we all like to think of the heart as the center of the body, but at this moment, every conscious part of me is in the hand that he holds. (10.61)
Think of all the hands you touch in your lifetime. Now think of the rare hands you touch that make you feel like this.
Quote #6
To our left, a posse of Joy Scouts takes guitar lessons from a retired monk. (We used to have a troop of Boy Scouts, but when the Boy Scouts decided gays had no place in their ranks, our scouts decided the organization had no place in our town; they changed their name and continued on). (10.62)
What does it say about gender roles in Paul's town that boys are willing to participate in an organization called Joy Scouts? And does this passage imply that most towns are not like Paul's?