You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.

He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

After the group vet appointment--during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room--we went back to Sabrina's and re-released the cats to their natural habitat.

As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.

This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud.