Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.

The words were strung in the air like garland. She could almost see them.

Her friendship . . . still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn't just go away because they no longer acknowledged it.

Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.

Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.

Don't you wish you could take a single childhood memory and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?

Some men you know are Southern before they ever say a word," Julia said as she and Emily watched Sawyer's progress, helpless, almost as if they couldn't look away. "They remind you of something good--picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.