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

Fine...a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.

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?

If this was my instinct talking, I didn‟t want to hear what it was saying.

Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't under­stand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away.

I was bored. Sad. Lonely. It was only a matter of time before I cracked.

I looked down again at the sign in my hand - ENJOY THE RIDE! - and it seemed, suddenly, to be just that. A sign.