“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!”

“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?”

“It was awful," I tell Luke at his locker. It's on the other side of the hall and I really feel like the air is cleaner over here or something. I almost suffocated trying to stuff my book bag into my own locker, squeezed right between Kimi and her voluptuousness and Wolf and his sexual-awakening-me-ness.”

“If I'm not telling you something, it's for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn't mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn't work like that.”

“Every time we try and get it together, something happens to pull us apart, and I can't help but feel that this is just isn't meant to be. And God knows I'm happy enough on my own, but tell me, is this how am I supposed to carry on?”

“There's that, too, but more than that, what people are sayingabout me right now, it's not really about me, it's about them. It's notmy baggage to carry. Why should I want to shoulder everybody else'sburdens and beat myself up over their problems? I'm not that bighearted.”