Society. The same society, I might add, that dictates that little girls should always be sugar and spice and everything nice, which encourages them not to be assertive. And that, in turn, then leads to low self-esteem, which can lead to eating disorders and increased tolerance and acceptance of domestic, sexual, and substance abuse." "You get all that from a pink Onesie?" Leah said after a moment.

There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.

I never really know what I'm going to write next until it comes to me. So we'll just have to see what happens.

Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to.

It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.

Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.

I wanted to be somewhere else ... Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.