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.

Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.

The language of solace, and comets, and the girls we all become, in the end.

The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.

And don't change for a guy, ever," Leah added. "If they're worthy, they'll like you just the way you are.

I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.