In Between

I love that feeling, when music rumbles in your chest and soaks all the way through, like it’s a part of you.

There are mistakes, and then there are choices.

One of these days really soon, you’re going to be able to say, ‘I know what it is to be wanted, what it is to be loved. I know what home is, and I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

My own forecast? How about stressful with a hundred percent chance of freaking out.

This is a great turtle, Katie.” “James.” Millie brings the waffles to the table. “Are you blind?” Yeah, you tell him, Millie. Some people just can’t appreciate good art. Millie holds her folded napkin up proudly. “It’s a frog.” True artists (like Picasso or me) are always misunderstood.

kids who have been tossed around some, we just want to be accepted. And who is the most accepting group on a school campus? The troublemakers. It may not be right, but sometimes it’s as close to right as we can find.

I am so not into poetry. I thoroughly dislike the stuff. You read a poem, and it speaks to you. You write a stupid essay on it, and the teacher tells you your interpretation is wrong, and the author is really saying something else entirely. Oh, really? Did you talk to the author yourself? No, I didn’t think so!

hasn’t shown a single sign of wanting to stone me for my misdeeds and poor choice of friends, so what’s a little

It’s about a teenage girl. She finds out she’s a princess, goes to live in a foreign country, endures rigorous training to become royalty, wins the heart of everyone in the land, hooks up with a boy, and finds out she is to one day be queen of an entire nation.

Oh, to be the author of prison letters. It's a young girl's dream come true.

Jesus loves peanut butter, and so do I” is legit.

children are. Moms to push their swings. Dads to wipe the dirt off scraped knees. Beyond the park there’s a water

Maybe kids are like parents—we don’t pick them, you know? We just gotta work with what we’ve got.

I put down my water glass and bow my

He wants you to hand the keys over and let him drive.

And their Bible? Until Nicholas Sparks puts out a version, I don’t know that I’ll ever get through that thing.

That’s all it comes down to. One choice, one wrong choice, and I sit here eaten up with guilt and a hundred other horrible feelings I can’t even begin to name.

I like to say my mom and dad ran off and joined the circus, and due to the fact that I’m allergic to spandex and heavy stage make-up, I could not join their trapeze act. Sometimes I add that I’m just hanging out at Sunny until I can perfect my fire-eating routine.

I bristle at this. My mother happens to be in prison right now. The only bright side about that is she is probably getting better food than I’ve been. My mother was one of those high-rolling entrepreneurs. She was doing so well, and it just all caved in on her. One of those dot-com businesses, you might inquire? Corporate takeover, perhaps? You know, those are all really great suggestions, but the fact is Mrs. Bobbie Ann Parker (a.k.a. my mom) found not everyone liked her products or appreciated her business skills. And when I say everyone, I mean the police. And when I say products, I mean drugs.