Here's a little dialogue snippet:
“You know what you are and what you should be doing.” Pendleson told her blankly.
She actually had no idea: Harriet spent the last 11 years without her parents by complaining, dying her hair purple, adding feather extensions, trying on short skirts, smoking, joining a band, quitting a band, throwing out her cigarettes, dying her hair back to black, and realizing in the end that the only effective thing she did was beg.
Every day she begged whatever deity or hillside or passing fate that sparked her interest. Once she even asked a preacher why she couldn't have what she wanted right now, and he told her something that stuck in her mind like a fish-hook. He told her in a calm and relaxed voice that:
“This is the problem with most of humanity.”
It wasn't the answer Harriet expected; this was because Harriet was a lot like humanity, but she was far from human—something that Pendleson drilled into her bones.
“You don't know me.” Harriet told him swiftly, a voice like thick velvet.