“I guess he sees the mortified look on my face-Can I get a little bedside manner here?-because he awkwardly pats the sides of my arms and tried to smile.”

“Asking Wolf to couples' skate is like bungee jumping without a cord-it may be the bravest thing I've ever done in my life.Or it could be the stupidest.There's only one way to find out.I look him dead in the eyes, summoning up both my courage and my sense of reckless abandon, but before I can even speak one syllable-"Oh!" he says, looking over one shoulder and dropping his hands. "Kaitlyn's free now. I gotta get over there!"He rushes off, blowing me an air kiss.My mouth should get used to falling open when he's around, either from his good looks or from his total lack of comprehension of all things polite. Did that just happen?My face in my palms, I lean on my elbows against the rail, invisible, and fall into an intoxicating state of self-pity.”

“We drive over the fields and the wind catches in my hair. I throw my arms back and face the sun.I feel like Leo in Titanic. 'Course, it only takes one pothole to snap me out of that little fantasy, and I hold on tight.”

“Whenever I see my teachers out in the real world I clam up, get a sort of weird feeling, and look for the nearest exit.”

“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.”

“Fuming, I reach for the stick at my feet; however, this is the precise moment that a small black garter snake slithers out in front of me. I do what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do: scream my head off, dance in spastic horror, and throw my tobacco knife into the dirt-completely missing the snake. I look to Luke for help, but he's laughing hysterically, which really gets my already hot blood boiling. Wrists on sweaty forehead, breathing totally out of control, I walk around in a circle until the disgusting little reptile slithers away.I am-offically-over it.”

“I take a deep breath and put on my best smile. You could sell ice to Eskimos, my dad always says, and looking at this crowd, I think I'm going to have to be quite the salesman.”