“Sooo, I'm tired of people thinking I'm a freak. I know you can't relate to that but -""Get over it already, will ya?" Candace stood. "You're not Smellody anymore. You're pretty. You can get hot guys now. Tanned ones with good vision. Not geeky hose jousters." She shut the window. "Don't you ever want to use your lips as something other than veneer protectors?"Melody felt a familiar pinch behind her eyes. Her throat dried. Her eyes burned. And then they came. Like salty little paratroopers, tears descended en masse. She hated Candace thought she had never made out with a boy. But how could she convince a seventeen-year-old with more dates than a fruitcake that Randy the Starbucks cashier (aka Scarbucks, because of his acne scars) was a great kisser? She couldn't.”

“Anson looked searchingly at her. His eyes moved over her body. He thought: you meet a woman and she starts a chemical reaction in you. You think there is no one like her in the world, then something happens, and it is finished. She means less to me now than the used plate after a good meal, and how little can that be?”

“Question.""Yes," Candace asked expectantly, eyes fixed on the dark street ahead."Have you ever had to chose sides between a friend and a boyfriend?"Candace nodded."Which side are you suppose to pick?""The right one.""What if they're both right?""They're not.""But they are," Melody insisted. "That's the problem.""No." Candace slowly rolled past a police cruiser. "They both think they're right. But who do you think is right? Which side represents the thing you think is worth fighting for?"Melody glanced out the window as though she was expecting the answer to be revealed on a neighbor's lawn. Every house except hers had the lights turned off. "I dunno.""You do," Candace insisted. "You just don't have the courage to be honest with yourself. Because then you'd have to do the thing you don't want to do, and you hate doing anything that's hard. Which is why you gave up singing and why you have no life and why you've always been a -""Um okay! Can we get back to the part where you were sounding like Oprah?""I'm just saying, Melly, what would you do if you weren't afraid? That's your answer. That's your side." She turned into the circular driveway and put the SUV in PARK. "And if you don't choose it, you're lying to yourself and everyone around you." She opened the door and grabbed her purse. "Oprah out!"The door slammed behind her.”

“Now Hadley presses her forehead against the window of the taxi and once again finds herself smiling at the thought of him. He's like a song she can't get out of her head. Hard as she tries, the melody of their meeting runs through her mind on an endless loop, each time as surprisingly sweet as the last, like a lullaby, like a hymn, and she doesn't think she could ever get tired of hearing it.”

“At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.”

“Don't take this the wrong way," Blue replied. Her cheeks felt a little warm, but she was well into this conversation and she couldn't back down now. "Because I know you're going to think I feel bad about it, and I don't." "All right." "Because I'm not pretty. Not in the way Aglionby boys seem to lie." "I go to Aglionby," Adam said. Adam did not seem to go to Aglinoby like other boys went to Aglionby. "I think you're pretty," he said.”