“Yes. But mostly I’m a normal girl.” I know he won’t believe that. I wonder if he’ll ever treat me like a normal girl again. That’s part of what I love about being with Tucker.He makes me feel normal, not in a plain Jane, nondescript way, but like I’m enough, just being me, without all the angel stuff. I almost start to cry thinking I’m going to lose that.”

“Dream dialogue: 
-Don’t cry. I, too, know what it’s like to be different.
-But I’m not different. I’m normal, I’m average, and that’s why I’m crying.”

“When I’m with you," he began again, "it’s like… I still don’t feel normal. But I can see normal at twelve o’clock on the horizon." He pointed past me, through the windshield of an imaginary airplane. "At least I know normal is still out there. I’ve spent the last three months not sure of that at all.”

“What I love about being queer is... Everything. I like that it makes me different, and I like that it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. I like that it makes people ask me lots of questions about things they probably would not normally ask people about their relationships or lifestyles. And most of all I love being queer because i get to have a girlfriend.”

“I love the me I am with him. I’m the girl who has Dave. I’m Lauren, Dave’s girlfriend. I’m someone better than Lauren Smith, who no one noticed till Dave came along. The thing is, that girl isn’t me and I know it. But when I’m with him, I feel like I could be her. That if something in me was just–I don’t know, shifted a little or something, smoothed down–people would think of me the way they think of Dave, and everything would always be perfect. I would be perfect.”

“I want to know how to make this girl laugh. I want to know what makes her cry. I want to know what it feels like to have her look at me as if I’m her knight in shinning armor.”