QUOTE : I could never afford to look past survival, especially not for anything as insanely expensive and useless as happiness, and I don't believe in it anyway. I'm too good at being hard, I've got so good at it, and I wasn't going to go soft all of a sudden now. I wasn't going to make Mum's choice, wasn't going to do something stupid because of a boy who'd come and sat shoulder-to-shoulder with me in the library, the two of us alone in a pool of light in the reaching dark all around-- a boy who improbably thought I was just grand and who made my stomach fold itself over into squares when he was near me.