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“Since then, he could only ever think about his sister, one wall away. And how he hoped Deenie never did things like this. With guys like him.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“It was the best night ever.
And they hadn't talked about any of it since.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“A few years ago, long after it had been closed, Eli said he saw a girl swimming in it, coming out of the water in a bikini, laughing at her frigthtened boyfriend, seaweed snaking around her. He said she looked like a mermaid.

Deenie always pictured it like in one of those books of mythology she used to love, a girl rising from the foam gritted with pearls, mussels, the glitter of the sea.

"It looks beautiful", her mother had said once when they were driving by at night, its waters opaline. “It is beautiful. But it makes people sick.�

To Deenie, it was one of many interesting things that adults said would kill you: Easter lilles, jellyfish, copperhead snakes with their diamond heads, tails bright as sulfur. Don't touch, don't taste, don't get too close.

And then, last week.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“Sometimes he wished he didn’t have a sister, though he loved Deenie and still remembered the feeling he had when he caught that kid Ethan pushing her off the swing set in the school yard in fifth grade. And how time seemed to speed up until he was shoving the kid into the fence and tearing his jacket. The admiring look his sister gave him after, the way his parents pretended to be mad at him but he could tell they weren’t.

These days, it was pretty different. There’d be those moments he was forced to think about her not just as Deenie but as the girl whose slender tank tops hung over the shower curtain. Like bright streamers, like the flair the cheerleaders threw at games.

Sometimes he wished he didn’t have a sister.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“A month or so ago, he and his friends had gone to Pizza House for slices after a game and he’d seen her in the kitchen. Her cap pushed back, she was carrying cold trays of glistening dough rounds, and her face had a kind of pink to it, her hips turning to knock the freezer door shut.

I didn't spit on it, Deenie had promised, winking at him from behind the scarlet heat lamps. He’d stood there, arrested. The pizza box hot in his hands. She looked different than at school and especially at home, and she was acting differently. Moving differently.

He couldn’t stop watching her, his friends all around him, loud and triumphant, their faces streaked with sweat.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“No way," he said, shaking his head, shaking the image of Lise, bare-legged, her skirt hitched high, from his thoughts. "Lise, she’s a sister to me."

"Oh," she said, fingertips making circles just above the waist of her skirt. Wider and wider circles.

"A sister," he repeated. He looked at her. There was something scratching again, in the corner above his eye, like those metal probes at the dentist clawing at your teeth.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“She’d inherited Eli’s old phone and often got texts meant for him. One night, that senior girl who always talked about ballet and wore leotards and jeans to school texted twenty-four times. One of the texts had said—Deenie never forgot it—MY PUSSY ACHES FOR U. It had to have been the worst thing she’d ever read. She’d read it over and over before deleting it.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“Once, a few weeks ago, she’d heard a girl’s voice in there and wondered if it was porn on the computer until she could tell it wasn’t. She heard the voice say Eli’s name. E-liii. She’d turned her music as loud as she could, held her hands to her ears, even sang to herself, eyes clamped shut. She hoped he heard her fling off her Ked so hard it hit the wall. She hoped he remembered she was here.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“I think you should shut the fuck up," Eli said, throwing his bag down with a thud that made everyone on the lab look up. "I think it’s time you do that."

Stim looked at him carefully. Eyes darting between the two of them, A.J. seemed to be waiting for something, grinning a little.

Stim shrugged. "Lise isn’t your sister, Nash," he said. "They’re not all your sisters.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“I saw it all,â€� Skye continued. “You should’ve seen the things your brother was doing to her." Deenie felt something crack and twist at her temple. "What? What did you say?"

"Your brother going down on your Lise. Lise’s leg twitching like a dog’s.� Deenie felt her neck stiffen to wood, her hand leaping to it. She couldn’t stop it, or Skye. Why Skye would say�

“She seemed to love it," Skye said, jaw out, her lips white. "She didn’t care who saw. Your brother didn’t either."

"You shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It wasn’t my brother," Deenie said. "Stop saying that. It wasn’t him.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever

“Back when Deenie was in middle school, she was always having sleepovers. All those girly thumping and trills on the other side of his bedroom wall confused and annoyed and stirred him, so he’d sneak down to the basement and page through a mildewed 1985 Playboy he’d found under the laundry chute. The pictures were startling and beautiful, but he always felt ashamed after, standing at the laundry sink where his mom scrubbed his uniform.”
― Megan Abbott, The Fever