She listens to my heart with her stethoscope, then goes through my chart. “Tell me about the transplant.”

“I’m just so on edge. After what happened at school today, I’ve been in a panic. That stupid photograph!”

“Every creature on earth is either predator or prey. A cow is a prey animal.”

"Watch it, nimbus. Your face just hit my new backpack."

It’s like I live in a cage with no door and no key. And I have no way to tell someone how to get me out.

But I think the real reason my grandmother doesn’t like my dog is because she blames him for Mama being gone.

His father--and no doubt his mother, too--were full-fledged members of the French Resistance.

By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.

There in the shade of a huge acaia, maybe twenty feet away from us, sat a whole pride.

The spiced peaches were "food for the angels".

“Remember my motto: YOUR CITY, BETTER!”

Orange flames … shooting out from a rocket? No. Not a rocket, but a flying … taco truck.

I would like to go to the mall, but then who would be here to protect us from the exploding furballs?!

There in the shade of a huge acaia, maybe twenty feet away from us, sat a whole pride.

I wrote FEEL THE HEARTBEAT across the top, the “art” in “heart” drawn in bold red strokes.

“With a tip of his fedora, he slithered off down the street.”

"Don't bother yelling for help because there's no one around to hear you."

“It was nothing more than a small smooth stone that she had found in the fields while weeding potatoes.”

I imagined a patch of tiger lilies under the ground all winter and blooming every summer for Mama.

He was here for me when I was in the hospital.

“She turned away, thinking that if Isabel could learn English, then maybe someday she could learn it too.”

I think I might have found the treasure chest.