Love and hate are visceral. Your stomach twists at the thought of that person. The heart in your chest beats heavy and bright, nearly visible through your flesh and clothes. Your appetite and sleep are shredded. Every interaction spikes your blood with a dangerous kind of adrenaline, and you’re on the brink of fight or flight. Your body is barely under your control. You’re consumed, and it scares you.” (1)
-- Lucy (chapter 1)

Importance: Lucy opens the novel by waxing poetically on the similarities between love and hate. Although she is speaking in the present tense, her words seem to foreshadow the fact that she is in love with Josh. And so all her forthcoming declarations of hatred ring false to the reader, who suspects the truth of her love for him.

How had Bexley managed to amass so many like-minded stuffed shirts, far more suited to accountancy or law? Gamins resented the...
-- Lucy (chapter 1)