It hadn't even occured to me that somebody would believe mine.

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.

"It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will."

I've always written in first person. It gives the readers more insight.

When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.

But she wouldn't. I knew that already. My mother and I had an understanding: we worked together to be as much in control of our shared world as possible. I was suposed to be her other half, carrying my share of the weight. In the last few weeks, I'd tried to shed it, and doing so sent everything off kilter. So of course she would pull me tighter, keeping me in my place, because doing so meant she would always be sure, somehow, of her own.