I am the ocean we lived on for two months. I am empty. I am nothing.

I will fill myself with the desert and the sky. I will be stone and stars, unchanging and strong and safe. The desert is complete; it is spare and alone, but perfect in its soltitude. I will be the desert.

I could have kisses like that for the rest of my life. Kisses that don't know who I am. Kisses that make me feel more and less than what I am. But my finger tap tap taps on my leg and reminds me that I am not who Adam thinks I am, and it makes me want to cry. It's not that I don't deserve his kiss. It's that the person I am can never really share a life, a soul, with the person he is.

We linked hands—my ex-boyfriend, my boyfriend, and my former friend-then-enemy-then friend and I—and walked through a door to see if maybe empty carbs were good for something after all.

Eyes like streams of melting snow,” she said, and it was all I could do not to roll my melting snow eyes.

Miss Lynn came around the corner of the row of lockers,glaring daggers. No, daggers would be too delicate a weapon for her.Glaring sledgehammers was probably more appropriate.

Soap operas got nothing on my family history.