I’ve given her plenty of crap about choosing my dad. If he wasn’t a great boyfriend in high school, what made her think he would be different as a husband (or a father)? Her defense was that her doubts were always smaller than the potential she saw in him. She could rattle off his supposed virtues—strong, hard-working, protective, dedicated to whatever he loved—but I didn’t buy it. I mean, none of those things held up in the end. He bailed on us and started a new life with a woman he met at Wegman’s. Mom and I have this debate twice a year when we hear from him on my birthday and Christmas (that is when she does since I won’t answer the phone), and every time she says it’s harder to be a grown-up than to be a kid and maybe I’ll understand someday. Fat chance.

She’s still waiting for me to explain why I’m home with her instead of at school with my boyfriend, but I’m not in the mood to explain. It is literally impossible to be both seventeen and honest with a parent all the time. So I am the master of evasion, omission, and just plain running away from a conversation rather than lying to Mom. Today, I’ll try a classic: incomplete truth.

“I needed lunch. You know I hate pizza day. They get it from Sal’s, and it’s cellulite on cardboard.”

“And?”

“And?” Tactic two: deflection. “Why aren’t you sleeping? You’re going to be a mess tonight.”

She isn’t buying it. She passes me a tissue. “Your mascara.”

Okay, so I sometimes do still wear makeup to school. Not a ton—a little for the lashes, a little highlighter, and some brow shaper, nothing that will be super obvious to teachers who sleep with the code of conduct under their pillows at night. It looks perfectly natural, as long as you think nature made me perfect, and I’m pretty safe as long as there’s no, like, eye shadow or lip color. (The glitter is almost translucent, so it barely counts.) Cheng says I don’t need any of it, but Cheng was born agreeable, and he says I look nice with it on, too. Sadly, my products are all from Walgreens, so they’re not the best, and I save the good stuff for events. (Like, say, prom.) Apparently, she can tell I’ve been crying.

Fine. I’ll tell her. It’s kinda her fault anyway: if she isn’t part of the solution, she’s part of the problem.

“Mrs. Somboon-Fox said Cheng and I can’t go to prom together.”

She rubs my arm comfortingly, but I can hear the relief in her voice. “Pobrecito …” She really should stop there, but no. “You knew that was coming.”