So, she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.

I see a girl caught in the remains of a holiday gone bad, with her flesh picked off day after day as the carcass dries out. The knife and fork are abviously middle-class sensibilities. The palm tree is a nice touch. A broken dream,perhaps? Plastic honeymoon, deserted island? Oh, If you put in a slice of pumpkin pie, it could be a desserted island! (Pg 64)

Mr. Freeman sighs. "No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You've already let them beat your creativity out of you!

It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

Dead girl walking” the boys say in the halls. “Tell us your secrets” the girls whisper, one toilet to another. "I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.

The stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking/stuffing/puking didn't make her skinny, it made her cry.