She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful, but I was old enough by then to know not to believe it anymore.

He was looking at me, jsut as I'd thought he would be, but like Bert's, his light was not what I expected. No pity, no sadness: nothing had changed. I realized all the times I'd felt people stare at me, their faces had been pictures, abstracts. None of them were mirrors, able to reflect back the expression I thought one I wore, the feelings only I felt.

I just do the best I can under the circumstances.

Then what are you like, Annabel?" he shot back. "A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all.

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together.

Being brave and self-confident doesn't necessarily start inside...It starts with the rest of the world, and it leads back to you.

I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I’d think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend’s lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass’s was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.