My mom l-o-v-e-s Danny. My dad, too. Even my sister says he’s a “stud-muffin.” Well, they can have him. They can just, like, chop him in thirds and share him. Ask me if I care.

So how come all these tears keep, like, streaming out of my face???

Dan

Man, can you believe that chick? Typical.

As long as I’m cool and everything’s rosy, she’s fine. But the second the chips are down—is she sympathetic? Understanding? How about even civil? Isn’t a girlfriend supposed to be loyal and stand by you through thick and thin and all that?

Gimme a break. I don’t need this noise.

I’m just glad she let her true self show so I don’t waste one more second on her.

I never really thought Ruby was so hot anyway. If you want to know the truth, I don’t know why I stayed with her for all these months. Habit? Laziness?

I’m glad it’s over.

And now I can skip that stupid engagement party thing tomorrow. Cool! I was dreading it. Gives me the creeps having her and her whole clan looking at me and licking their chops, like, Oh boy, maybe we can hook this one next!

Phew! That was a narrow escape.

I wonder if Sarah got in trouble today. Her mom seemed pretty calm at school. Of course, a full-blown hysteric would seem cool compared to my mother.

Maybe I’ll give Sarah a call and see how she’s doing. We’re in this together, after all.

Sarah

I woke from a nightmare and stumbled to the bathroom around midnight. On the way back to my room I saw my mother sitting perfectly still in the den, holding an empty wineglass.

“You okay?” I asked.

I startled her. She jumped a little. Then she said, “I was thinking about cheating. It’s such a loaded word. Cowboys in the movies shoot each other dead for cheating at cards,” she said. “When I found out that your father was cheating on me,

I
wanted
to
die.”

Here we go, I thought. Time for the what-your-father-did-to-me talk. Oh goody! Now the two of us could commiserate like two old crones, about Father’s betrayal of Mother and Katie’s betrayal of me.

But this time my mother didn’t go on about the divorce. Instead she said, “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I cheated on a science test when I was in sixth grade. I completely forgot about that until tonight. We were studying the human body.”

(I almost hooted, picturing my mother in sixth grade.)

“I remember sitting at the kitchen table,” she said, “carefully writing the names of the bones and the nerve groups on the cover of my blue binder.” Mother raised her glass to her mouth, then remembered it was empty and put it back down.