How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The strangest thing about all of this was that, before, in my old life, I hadn't been any of these things: not a student leader or an actress or an athlete. There, I was just average, normal, unremarkable. Just Mclean. (1.31)
None of Mclean's new personas really match up with who she was before the divorce. In fact, they're all pretty much exaggerated characters that she makes up, like a little girl playing dress-up for the day.
Quote #2
The name I'd chosen, the girl I'd decided to be here, was poised on the tip of my tongue. But in that place, at that moment, something changed. Like that quick trip below the surface had changed not only the trajectory of my life here, but maybe me, as well. (2.211)
So much for being Liz Sweet this time around. Mclean messes up when she tells Dave her real name—or does she? Maybe she's actually not messing up her introductions for the first time ever.
Quote #3
Sitting there, I realized that one of two things could happen from here. Either I would hate Deb, or we'd be best friends and Liz Sweet would end up just like her. (3.55)
Why does it have to be one or the other? Mclean's obviously not used to just letting things go with the flow—everything has to be a decision that impacts how she's going to define herself for the remainder of her time in a place.
Quote #4
Because my best efforts otherwise, Mclean already had a story here. She was the girl who'd discovered Dave on the back porch, then taken refuge in his hideout. The girl at the party, the girl Deb welcomed in her own spazzy freaker style. She was not the same Mclean I'd been for the first fourteen years of my life. But she was Mclean. (3.94)
For the first time in the past two years, Mclean gets to be… well, Mclean. This may not sound like a big deal to you, but for our shape-shifting protagonist, it marks a huge change. It's kind of scary to be herself for the first time ever.
Quote #5
"Well the truth is, Dave's changed a lot since he transferred here. I think it's a good thing, because he's, like, a real person now. But it freaks his folks out. I think they liked it better when he was just like them, completely under their control." (4.82)
Dave isn't putting on a front or becoming a bad boy now that he's enrolled at a public school—he's just discovering who he is away from his parents' stuffy scientist upbringing.
Quote #6
In real life, she wore rain boots, had dirt under her nails, and squelched around in the garden mud, picking aphids off of the tomato plants one by one.
Now, though, my mom looked exactly like Katherine Hamilton, high-profile coach's wife. (7.5-6)
Whatever happened to Katie Sweet? That's what Mclean wonders every time she sees the new, glossy, rich version of her mom. It's not the mom that she remembers growing up with, and she resents how different she looks now.
Quote #7
It wasn't the first time I didn't know how to answer this. In fact, I'd taken pains over the last few years to have a different response every time… I knew anything I said would be drowned out. And maybe it was because no one could hear that I answered anyway. "I don't know," I said. I don't know. (7.47)
When Dave asks Mclean who in the world she is, she has to think about her answer—and the actual honest to goodness truth is that she has no idea anymore. She's going to have to take a rain check on that question.
Quote #8
Here, though, despite my best efforts, I'd somehow ended up behind myself again: Mclean Sweet, she of the messed-up parents and weird basketball connections, Super S***ty and a U-Haul's worth of baggage. All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real. (9.138)
How in the world did Mclean end up as… well, Mclean Sweet again? She tried pretty freaking hard to shed this name and to develop a thick layer of random personas to protect herself from having to be real and honest and raw.
Quote #9
But really, it was about six months, or a summer. It wasn't about the divorce, or all these moves, and all the girls I'd chosen to be. This time, more than any before, it was about me. About a life I'd built in not much more than a month, a town where I felt finally somewhat at home, and the friends I'd made there. (10.126)
When Mclean's mom brings in the lawyers, she panics—and not just because she doesn't want to get separated from her dad. It's also because she doesn't want to leave Lakeview since she's just started to feel like herself again after three years on the run.
Quote #10
In my head, it went off in a million directions—I'm not that girl anymore. I'm not sure who I am—each of them only leading to more complications and explanations. (13.65)
It's hard for Mclean to explain to her dad just why she's freaking out so hard when he mentions the move to Hawaii. Maybe saying, "I keep changing my name when we move," isn't the best way to do it, but it's a start…