"You promised you wouldn't bring that up ever again."

Dan gave the pen a casual flip. "I lied."

"Forgotten, you said. Wiped from your memory, you said."

"You can't expect me to let material like that go to waste. I'm a writer, Casey."

"Apparently you're also a liar."

You probably won't believe it either, but I swear everything I'm about to tell you is true.

"I have it on reliable authority that you're, and I quote, 'acting weird'." "Not much of a quote." "Sources are being remarkably cagey, so I figured I'd go to the -" dammit - "source." Dan didn't respond, other than to toss him the thesaurus.

Natalie pulled the grape sucker out of her mouth with a pop and pointed it at Casey. "For implying that I am a witch, your pants privileges have hereby been revoked." "Hey!" Casey protested. Dan patted Casey's shoulder. "Should've stuck with Henry V."

"Dear Abby," he writes at the top of a blank page, "Let me tell you the one about the bishop and the fullback. It's a good one. It's way better than the one about Casey."

"Also, you like to make Dan leave the Northeast corridor every once in a while?"

"You're on the right track."

"And he might run into Civil War reenactors and freak out?"

"There's that."

"And it's fun to say Chattanooga?"

"There you have it.

"But if Hansbrough was lost," Dan said. "And hungry. And it was just him, and you, and no food, in the dark alley. He might eat you. Or Noah's black market babies." "He's a power forward, Danny, not a cannibal."

"Good. Be funny Friday ... Esther and I are having friends over. I told everyone I know that my boys were going to be on television."

"We're on television every night, Isaac."

"Yeah, but this is special."