“I shrug, and then we sit awhile without saying anything. Then he goes, 'Where'd you learn to fight like that, anyway?'I start to shrug again, and then I stop. 'I guess from my dad,' I say, which, really, is the truth.”

“He apologized when I was twelve. He was crying. I don't like to remember that. I like to remember the time he spelled and defined 'metamorphosis' when my mama was clean. He used her as an example, and he was chewing on the Popsicle stick left over from our lunch that day. When he smiled, his teeth were mad purple.”

“Grace,' my mother tries, just before my frozen hot chocolate comes. I don't answer her.Later, while she's waiting for her credit card back from the waitress, she says, 'I'm sorry.”

“I'm so disgusting,' I try to argue, but his hands and his voice and his marble mother's eyes won't let it be true anymore.'No,' he says. 'You're beautiful.”

“I start laughing. You have to laugh. Life is just funny sometimes. As long as you remember.”

“Nah,' I tell her after a while. 'He is more like a brother, you know?'The good kind. The kind with the purple teeth.”

“If I could be small again, Monique told me at the playground's fence, slurring her words and watching Caitlin sob, I'd want to have a friend like her.”