“I wondered if she really was that rude, or if she had some sort of medical condition where the filter between her brain and her mouth had been broken since birth.”

“If I had learned anything by hanging out with her and her friends, it was that once you got up close to people, you realized that everyone - no matter how popular he or she might be - was just a living, breathing human being...”

“So you don't really believe in love?" I whispered. How could this be? I was crushed. It was like finding out the truth about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny in one sitting.”

“There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had never truly loved or hated, for she had never seen the world she had been used to living in closely enough for it to evoke passion in her.”

“All I want is a best friend whom I can't wait to kiss again.”

“I guess it was what my friend Phoolendu at the yoga studio would call kismet. That's like fate, but much more dramatic.”

“But most important, she had broken through that invisible wall of terror that surrounded her, and lived to tell the tale.”