“Sure, Mom." There are worse punishments than tailing Patrick all summer. Don't contractors usually work without shirts?”

“Don't you ever see the bright side of things?" Patrick asks as I mope against the bottom of the ladder."Easy to see the bright side when you're getting paid by the hour.""Delilah, I will gladly give you my fill wage plus a month's supply of your iced choco-nut whatever lattes if you trade places and clothes with my right now.""You're not wearing a shirt.""That's the deal, Hannaford," he says.”

“Emily, Megan, Jack, Luna, Patrick . . . they helped me learn what true friendship is. It's never perfect, but it is important.”

“I think we both like Crazy Anna a little more than regular Anna. It's like magic - while I was trying on the bathing suit last month, it rubbed against my butt and unleashed the Absolute Best Summer Ever Bikini Genie, granting all my wishes.”

“The whole idea of losing one's virginity is kind of ridiculous. To lose something implies carelessness. A mistake that you can fix simply by recovering the lost object, like your cell phone or your glasses. Virginity is more like shedding something than losing it. As in, "Don't worry, Mom. You can call off the helicopters and police dogs. Turns out - get this - I didn't actually lose my virginity. I just cast it off somewhere between here and Monterey. Can you believe it? It could be anywhere by now, what with all that wind.”

“So Old Man Date Rape was number what?" she asks. "Four or five?""We're not counting him," I say. "This is the Twenty Boy Summer, not the Twenty Dirty Old Man Summer.”

“They didn’t hold Frankie as she sobbed for hours at a time without talking. They didn’t make sure she ate even when she wasn’t hungry. They didn’t do her homework when she couldn’t concentrate, or explain to our teachers why she was late to every class.”