They're just words. And words alone don't really mean anything. It's what you feel and what you believe when you say them that matter.

I have a theory that as long as you have one good friend, one real friend, you can get through anything.

I know certain truths about life.

Sometimes things happen. Things happen even when you don't intend them to happen. Maybe at the beginning you had good intentions, or no intentions, or intentions you thought were harmless, but before you knew it things got out of control....Sometimes things take on a life of their own. You become powerless. There is nothing you can do to stop certain things from happening.

I thought he might kiss me as we sat shivering on the bank of the spring with our clothes soaked through and our feet dangling in the steaming water. We looked into each other's eyes the way I'd always imagined people did right before they leaned in closer and touched lips for the first time. But that was all we did. We looked at each other. Into each other. We were still clutching hands.

It was then, there in the darkness, with only those little pin-points of light to see by, light from a world away where other people with their own problems and their own secrets lived their own lives, that everything in our world changed for good.

The Little Drummer Boy" was playing in the background for what seemed like the third time in a row. I fought off an urge to beat that Little Drummer Boy seneless with his own drumsticks.

My brother, he says. My brother is dead."And again he asks me to kill him. One more time before he falls to his knees and sobs. And i get it. I do. Because i have a brother too.

I'd watched enough TV in the lonely afternoons after school, before there was a cheese shop to go to, to know that there were boys who lied, who knew how to say just the right thing or give you just the right look. Boys who could make you feel a way you thought you didn't deserve to feel.

But here's something that I know about friendship: Sometimes the right thing to do is to not point out that your friend hasn't touched her chicken fingers or French fries and not point that maybe she's just overreacting. Instead, you just smile and sit with her and say, "I understand" when really, you don't understand her at all.

As the bus took us north on a connection of dark farm roads and smaller highways, I started to wonder where all the cars were. How could the streets be so empty? How could people sleep when there was so much at stake, so much happening, when there were so many reasons to be awake and alive? And I wondered how it was that I could feel both empty, like these streets, and yet so full at the same time. And those weren't the only contrasting poles inside me. I felt sad and happy. Scared and exhilarated. I felt young and old.

The roof was torn off the gym. God's way of telling the jocks that they'd better remember who's really charge.

I totally bought you as a girl," says Marisol. "I'll double check with Frances later, but by the sounds of things, you seem to have no balls.

There are days when I think I don't believe anymore. When I think I've grown too old for miracles. And that's right when another seems to happen.

The walls were coming down around me, but still, I couldn't imagine telling the truth. Not now. It was too late. How can I tell Mom and Dad what we'd done? It would ruin everything. It would ruin their image of me; it would ruin every thought they'd ever had about who I was. It would be another death.Another loss. Another miscarriage.

I was not boy crazy. Really, I wasn't. But I was lonely, I guess.

I’m looking to make a miracle