Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?

It was no coincidence, that fear could move a person to extremes, just as seamlessly as love. They were the conjoined twins of emotion: If you didn't know what was at stake to lose, you had nothing to fight for.

I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time.

If you choose to be looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you are find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.

the letters are mixed up. U and I should be together.

Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?