“So now books were her only friends. She'd read Lord of the Rings so often she could recite whole scenes by memory.It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.”

“But it had gotten so boring, all that crying and wanting and needing. This year she'd realized that she'd never be like her mom, and the realization had freed her. She stopped trying to get good grades and make good friends, and do everything well. She had flourished in her rebellion, reveled in it.”

“She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.”

“She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.”

“At one point, she'd wanted to hurl the whole breakfast at the wall. And then she'd remember why it was that men had temper tantrums and women didn't: cleanup.”

“Girls like you can't understand," Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.”

“That was her mistake. She'd pinned her happiness to a teenage girl's chest. Idiot. The realization made her almost smile. She certainly knew better than that.”