“Tamani was suddenly struck by just how young David looked. He forgot, sometimes, that David, Laurel, and their friends were younger, in some ways much younger, than Tamani. He was posing as a schoo...”

“Are you looking for something real in this world of illusions? Call me. Casual Flings need not apply. I am looking for Love.”

“Guess Ive been reading too much fantasy.”

“But sadness was familiar; sadness was manageable. It didn't transform her, the way the raging anger did. She could remain herself and still feel this aching grief.”

“I just don't want to cozy up to the guy whose girl I have every intention of stealing.”

“Laurel, David? Would you like to share the joke with the rest of the class?" he asked, one hand on his skinny hip.”

“I've loved you for a long time, ' she said. 'But there was always something holding me back. Maybe it was that I was afraid of an emotion that was so consuming. It still frightens me,' she admitted...”

“Her two worlds, two lives that she tried so hard to keep separate, were crashing together. And she felt helpless to stop it.”

“Her hand wandered under his shirt, feeling his rapid breath expand his ribs. She hesitated for a secondwondering what the chances were that either of her parents would come home earlythen lifted hi...”

“Maybe I didn't march to the same drummer as most people, but I could do things on my own and do them well. That was what I'd learned, little by little, in the year I turned sixteen. I was complete ...”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”