If I felt like a fish out of water in my family, I felt like a fish on Mars in Adam’s circle.

We kiss again. This next kiss is the kind that breaks open the sky. It steals my breath and gives it back. It shows me that every other kiss I've had in my life has been wrong.

Life is a big fat gigantic stinking mess, that's the beauty of it, too.

So are you moving on now? Is that what brought you to the grand metropolis of Valladolid?” “No. The wind just blew me here.” “What? Like a plastic bag?” “I prefer to think of myself as a ship. Like a sailboat.

A day might just be twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through one seems as impossible as scaling Everest.

The politeness was painful. I wanted to push through it, to return to the glow of the night of the concert, but I was unsure of how to get back there.

When I was little, I used to go to the local ice-skating rink. In my mind, I always felt like I could twirl and jump, but when I got out onto the ice, I could barely keep my blades straight. When I got older, that's how it was with people: In my mind, I am bold and forthright, but what comes out always seems to be so meek and polite. Even with Evan, my boyfriend for junior and most of senior year, I never quite managed to be that skating, twirling, leaping person I suspected I could be. But today, apparently, I can skate.