“It was amazing what an hour with her sketchpad could do for her mood. She was sure that the lines she drew with her black marker were going to save her years of worry lines in the future.”

“She felt just like that girl in that book with the letter A on her chest. Only her A signified Alone. She was an outcast, cast out by her own choices, an outsider with a pretty face. Like a rose, she may have been beautiful to look at, but almost everyone only knew the thorny side.”

“When everything was laid out before her, she felt safe, loved even. She was always trying to be more organized than she was. She knew it was weird and blamed her mother, with the lists andnotes she’d leave whenever she and Dad went out of town. The labeled dinners in the freezer and the 20 emergency numbers on the phone showed she cared, even when absent, she cared.”

“He was like her favorite type of candy, she realized, a bit sour at first but all sweetness in the long run. Admittedly . . . that tartness was part of the allure all along.”

“In her experience, there were only two kinds of guys: the ones into sports and the ones into video gaming. It seemed guys had to be obsessed with something, whether it was watching a game or playing in it or keeping some weird collection related to it.”

“A slight breeze cooled the Hawaiian spring air, swaying the branches of palm trees, which cast black silhouettes against the purple and orange colors of the twilight sky.”

“Mount Kilauea spilled glowing lava like cords of orange neon-lighting from seemingly nowhere. In the blackness that engulfed the night, electric heat lit flowing streams that fell into the sea, disappearing in a cloud of steam with a sizzling splash.”