A girl who is thirteen-which is hard, and difficult, and beautiful, and painful, and exhilarating.

Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other's constant.

There's no way to convince her that just because you put half. planet between you and someone else, you can't drive that person out of your thoughts. Believe me. I've tried.

There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.

In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do.

Why do some memories bleed out of nowhere and others stay locked behind doors?

Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind. What Mary really runs isn't a bakery, but a community.