How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
So it all went into the box… Every last souvenir of the love we had, the prizes and debris of this relationship, like the glitter in the gutter when the parade has passed, all the everything and whatnot kicked to the curb. (2.1)
There's an old saying that goes something like this: Life is a parade, so don't let it pass you by. Well, a few pages in, Min tells us the parade is over. So you can guess how she's feeling about life.
Quote #2
I'm dumping the whole box back into your life, Ed, every item of you and me. I'm dumping this box on your porch, Ed, but it is you, Ed, who is getting dumped. (2.1)
Min often speaks of losing her virginity as coming of age. Here's an alternate theory, though: Min becomes an adult by letting her first love go.
Quote #3
"Well, I want to be a director."
"Really? Wow. Like Brad Heckerton?"
"No, like a good one," I said. "Why, what did you think?"
"I didn't really think," you said.
"And what are you going to be?"
You blinked. "Winner of state finals, I hope." (8.78-8.83)
Min dreams of being a film director when she grows up, while Ed seems to have a hard time envisioning his life beyond state finals.
Quote #4
"But, Min, I know it's lame, but those were my saddest times. I'd cry my eyes out when I realized, beg my mom in the middle of the night to take me back here to find them. Nobody got it, it's just a toy or you have plenty of cars or it's your responsibility to take care of your things. But I was so lost without them, those times when I lost them." (15.99)
Ed clings to toy trucks, which are relics from his childhood. So that's where he is with the whole "growing up" thing.
Quote #5
I thought how I only wave at Joe if I see him in the halls, how that can't even count as still talking to him, let alone staying friends like we promised we would when we ended it. But most of all, in the blaze and clatter of the park, I tried to put together how I saw it then and how I saw it before…the way it's different again now with you, with your friends gone from my Fridays and no more bonfires lighting up my eyes in the park and you just an ex-boyfriend about to get his stuff thrown back on his doorstep." (15.69)
Min has a hard time reconciling the past and the present. But that's what she's going to have to do to move forward. Spoiler alert: It's what everyone has to do in order to move forward at some point.
Quote #6
"But before, not so long ago—my own rose from prom still OK on the mirror, dried but not a corpse—you were just Ed Slaterton, jocky hero, handsome in the student newspaper and star of a million strands of gossip. Now…you were something else fierce and fiery in my chest and I tried to put it together in my head, the print and the negative, the boyfriend and the celebrity shadow." (15.69)
Min thinks that Ed is not the same man that he used to be. With their breakup, he comes full circle, fading back into the shadow he was before.
Quote #7
"Am I," I asked, "is it OK not to be a virgin?"
Al sat up straight and put the beer on the coffee table. "So you're telling me—?"
"No," I said. "I am, still." (22.90-22.92)
Min sees losing her virginity as a huge milestone in her life. It is, but that's not the point in the book where she loses her innocence—she loses her innocence when she finds out that Ed cheated and Lottie Carson is dead.
Quote #8
"Shut up. You're not missing me."
"Not really," he said. "Though we did say we'd stay friends."
"We're friends," I said. "Look, we're having an awkward conversation. If that's not friendship—" (29.193-29.194)
Min and Joe, her ex-boyfriend, said they'd stay friends after they broke up. The depth of that friendship is pretty clear from this snippet of conversation, though, the first they've had in ages.
Quote #9
"Pizza." I was fierce with the thought of it. My first grown-up meal, I couldn't help thinking, and what I want is kid stuff. (36.3)
Min ponders the irony of wanting "kid stuff" right after losing her virginity. She also spills her first "grown-up meal" all over her shirt, suggesting that maybe she hasn't really grown up yet.
Quote #10
He'd been sitting on the right-side bench, our usual spot, which I hadn't touched since you and I had started smacking my life around. It looked like a relic, too, relicky Al with relicky Lauren and a spot for me grave-robbed empty. (39.1)
Nothing marks the passage of time quite like spotting metaphors for your own death.