excerpt # 4

She laid down next to me, staring up at her ceiling, which she had covered in a little sticker stars detailing accurate representations of the constellations. “Tell me what it’s like,” she said.

“It’s anything you want it to be. You can have everything you want, you can be wherever you want, and I guess you can find anyone you want, although it’s kind of like finding a damn needle in a haystack.”

“But even though you have everything, it’s not the same, is it?”

“No, of course not.”

excerpt # 3

"And…
I threw up in his mouth. He pulled away, disgusted, and moments later, I blacked out. This is when he ran up to my house and got my parents, and I was rushed to the emergency room. This is when the nurses stuck a breathing tube in my mouth and my stomach was being pumped.

I died a little while after. It didn’t hurt. I wasn’t even conscious. There wasn’t any bright light or robed arm reaching out to pull me up into the clouds. I just died. It was as simple as that."

excerpt # 2

"That doesn’t mean that I still can’t hold a grudge, and I will forever remember that time in fifth grade when she tripped me up at the horse show and I got mud all over my brand new jodhpurs, then went behind the stable and stole my boyfriend. I was going to keep that little nugget in my heart forever."

excerpt # 1

"Most days I liked to just watch the day unfold at my old school, Miss Ford’s Preparatory School for Brilliant Girls, a private school for, well, brilliant girls. But also humble girls. In fact, I was the Director of our outreach program, Feeding Our Communities Kids, which had a slightly unfortunate acronym, as you can see. Anyway, with funds raised, we built a soup kitchen just off of campus for the lesser well off. You know, like people who drove "economy cars". The girls all voted to name it after me, which was a huge honor. I accepted, because it was going to look wonderful on my school transcript for colleges, but also because I cared a lot more about hungry people than the rest of those stuck up fake anorexic snobs."