“My theory: if the malls don't open until ten what's the point of being up earlier than that?”

“The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the hippo squatting on my head.”

“Mom perched on the edge of our sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I'd grown to know well. It was the same one she'd flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she'd pulled out when I'd taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver's ed last spring. It was her SMother face.”

“I didn't point out that Courtney and I were hardly BFFs. In Mom's world everyone under the age of eighteen was friends with everyone else, like we were all part of some secret society of minors.”

“Okay, if there's one thing you don't ever say to a woman on the edge it's that she's hormonal.”

“Bull-fluff. You didn't break up with a girlfriend of a whole year because of stuff.”

“The first thing I did was run. Okay, actually the first thing I did was scream, lose my balance, flail my arms in the air like some kind of uncoordinated bird, then slide down the side of the tree and land on my butt.Then I ran.”