(Buddy when he was seventeen, while he was falling in love with Marlene)

Buddy was this close to going all the way with Marly. His jaw hurt from kissing and his hands smelled like the inside of her underpants. He stood in the warm kitchen. Outside the kitchen it was two in the morning and winter. He fried pancakes and wrote with a butter knife into the uncooked batter, I love Marly I love Marly...over and over again. He wiped batter onto his thighs and thought I love this world. The smell of the pancakes didn't wake up his mother. Heat rose up from the floor and was trapped under the flaking ceiling, under his mother's quilt, under the old stove. His mother made sounds in her sleep to her dreams. The sound filled up the rooms. All his life, he'd heard these night noises. He ate his I love Marly pancakes.