Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting.

It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.

And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.

Lifestyle is an terrible, unpleasant put to not have a very finest buddy.

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.

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.