“How is it?" I ask as we stroll towards the dressing rooms. "Working at the playground. That must be fun.""Sure, they're just adorable," she says, "For the first five minutes. And then I want to wring their adorable little necks."I stop, shocked. "I always figured you loved kids.""Yeah, no." Kayla shakes her head emphatically. "One kid, I can do, even two-- just stick them in front of a Disney movie, let them play Xbox all night. But a herd of them?" She shudders.”

“I wouldn't settle for the easy path; I would be someone extraordinary, no matter how hard it made things right now. But now, looking back, I wonder if we weren't just as bad as the bitches and cliques we made fun of, thinking we were different, above them all.”

“See" Kayla links her arm through mine, leaving Blake to jostle and race the other guys. "I tell them I can handle my own stuff, but it's like a mark of pride or something. I'm surprised Blake doesn't just hoist me over his shoulder and try to carry me, too!"I laugh, starting to relax. "Is it bad I can actually picture that?”

“So you try, and try, to move past it and forget about them, but it's like they're stuck in your head -- you can't just flip a switch and stop loving them! So you hate yourself for it because you know it's no use, but nothing you do seems to ever make a difference.”

“And that's how it was with Garrett. Because he understood me, the me I wanted so desperately to be. Think about your best friend - how you tell them everything, how they're the person who knows you best, all your deepest fears and insecurities. They're the one you call when something amazing happens or when everything falls apart and you need someone to come over and watch movies and tell you that everything's going to be OK. It's not like family, who are obligated to love you and even then sometimes fail to be everything they're supposed to be. Your true friend has chosen you, and you them, and that's a different kind of bond.That's Garrett to me. I'm used to talking to him all the time, about the most meaningless stuff. To have him gone feels like a loss, an absence haunting me every day. Without him, there's just the empty space that used to be filled with laughter and friendship and comfort.Can you really blame me for finding it so hard to let go?”

“We love the idea of transformation, so we can make ourselves something more than just ordinary. It's why you're doing this, isn't it?" she asked. "You don't want to settle for what you are; you want to be more. You want to win.”

“I can't get past the strange contradiction that seems to lurk behind everything we do. Because no matter what, or who, we end up choosing, all of us feel like we've failed somehow. Kayla feels guilty for planning a future with Blake; Dominique feels guilty that she won't with Carlos. LuAnn dropped everything to make it work with her guy, and I'm filled with shame every time I think about how I did the same thing, building my life around Garrett without realizing it then working just as hard to take that version of my life apart, piece by piece. So how are we supposed to win? On the one hand, the world tells us that capital-L Love is epic, and all conquering, and the meaning of everything, but on the other it drills us with this message that we shouldn't make any sacrifice or effort to pursue it, because that would make us weak, unempowered, desperate, silly girls.”