The Usual Rules Quotes

For a while she asked when her father was coming home, but then she stopped. The picture that used to be on top of her mother's special treasure case in the living room had disappeared—the one wi...

Back when her mother first introduced her to Josh, she meant to hate him. She was only seven then. She'd seen a video at Amelia's house around that time, called Parent Trap, where a couple of twins...

Wendy had been best friends with Amelia since first grade. In third grade, they'd tied their desks together, until the teacher made them cut the string. They had invented a language nobody else und...

Josh was making French toast. The kitchen smelled of just-ground coffee beans and frying butter. He was playing the Teach Yourself Spanish tape. Part one of her mother's birthday present last month...

He sounded so sad, Wendy wanted to comfort him, but she knew her mother wouldn't like that. She could see the characters in Parent Trap rewinding to the beginning of the movie, where they hated eac...

I'm at St. Vincent's, he told her. There are all these stretchers lined up, but nobody's on them. The doctors are standing around. He started to cry. The only times she'd heard him cry before were...

Your dad wanted to call you Sierra, her mother would begin, because you were conceived in the Sierra Mountains, on a camping trip. Trout fishing, naturally. But ever since I was a little girl, I al...

She would list all the things she would do—cut off her hair, cut off her arm, both legs, gain fifty pounds, two hundred, never have a boyfriend, never have anybody fall in love with her for her w...

There's people jumping, he said. The fire trucks are melting.From her desk, a girl named Sandra, who never talked, began to cry. Several people put their heads down on their desks. One girl started...

I don't know why I say the mean things I do, she told Amelia. My parents are just getting on my nerves so much lately. Sometimes these horrible remarks ooze out of me. (1.51)