I can't stop thinking about what he felt like against my body, against my lips. I can't remember anything else, anything before that. And I realize at this moment that I've finally done it. That horrible, awful thing I swore I would never do. The frosting. The cigarettes. The blue glass triangle. The shooting stars. The taste of his mouth on mine in the hall closet. Gone. All I can think about is Sam. Matt is – erased. My whole body is warm and buzzing. Sam is smiling next to me, because of me. And I've never felt so lonely in all my life.

— Sarah Ockler

I closed my eyes under the fluorescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.

— Sarah Ockler

I follow the path we’ve taken so many times this summer – across the front, down the street, cut back through a neighbor’s yard, down the stairs to the beach, past the pier, through the campfire labyrinth, up to the deck of the Shack, and straight into Sam’s arms. Without speaking, he kisses me hard on the mouth and I kiss him back, sobbing and crumpling into his chest like a broken puppet.

— Sarah Ockler

I'm not sure if you even want me around or if you just feel sorry for me. I'm not sure of anything.

— Sarah Ockler

I'm sorry. For all of us. Sorry for all the little ways the people who were supposed to love us most could hurt us so deeply, despite their shared heritage and blood, as thought their knowledge of our pasts gave them unlimited access to all the most tender places, the old wounds that could be so easily reopened with no more than a glance, a comment, a passing reminder of all the ways in which we failed to live up to their expectations.

— Sarah Ockler

I'm still dropping dishes thinking in slow motion about the GPS woman in Mom's car. I imagine her beckoning me from outside the kitchen window illuminated like some robot-angel calling me forth to the Lexus where she will ferry me off to that planet of monotonous peace that special otherworldly place where all the residents are relaxed and confident and completely numb. Your life will. Get better in. Six. Point four. A Million. Miles.

— Sarah Ockler

In your entire life, you can probably count your true friends on one hand. Maybe even on one finger. Those are the friends you need to cherish, and I wouldn't trade one of them for a hundred of the other kind. I'd rather be completely alone than with a bunch of people who aren't real. People who are just passing time.

— Sarah Ockler

I really don't even know you, and yet, in my life, you are forever entangled; to my history, inextricably bound.

— Sarah Ockler

It seemed everything that had ever lived and died in this world had passed through here, had left its indelible imprint.

— Sarah Ockler

It's really bad when dads cry.

— Sarah Ockler