Helloooo." Miss Ohio rolled her eyes. "I'm from the Buckeye State. We are serious about our tailgating parties. I can turn anything into a grill.

Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears fall where they may, because it is morning; it is morning and there is so much to see.

HI. I’m from Arkansas, the cantaloupe state. And tonight, I hope you will hold my melons close to your heart and vote me your Miss Teen Dream.

Come awake, Tom. Fathers can willfully hurt their children. They can be addicts too weak to give up their vices, no matter the pain it causes. Mothers can turn you invisible with neglect. They can erase you with a denial, a refusal to see. Friends can deceive you. People lie. It is a cold, hard world. I do not blame Nell Hawkins for retreating from it into a madness of her own choosing.

Just once I’d like to meet a fella who isn’t a phony. Somebody who doesn’t wanna buy me a fur so he can show me off to his boys.

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.

I've never been in love. I will die without knowing what it feels like to need to see one person's face when you go to sleep at night, to crave seeing it when you wake up. I wish I knew.