Excerpt:

People make a big deal about junior high, but the only thing I’ve noticed is you can’t be friends with boys anymore.  You get two choices: Either they are your enemies or they are trying to mash with you.  There is no middle ground.

Take Charlie Parker, who lives three houses down from me and used to be my best friend.  All through elementary school we spent our free time in the fort in his backyard, making up secret codes planning spy attacks against the neighbors.  Then seventh grade hit us, and what happened?  The time capsule tragedy, where Charlie stole one of my bras and all the boys paid a buck to see it before it got buried.  We haven’t really spoken since, which stinks on so many levels.  Level #1, Charlie Parker is the only person I ever told about my dad.

Once I was in the nurse’s office at school and there was this pamphlet, When Someone You Love Has a Drinking Problem.  I took the test, answering all twenty questions about you know who.  I said yes to every single one. 

“Would you like to take that with you?” the nurse asked. 

I shook my head, put the pamphlet back in its cubby. 

The nurse scooted her chair over next to me.  She leaned in and placed the back of her hand on my forehead, soft as a butterfly.  “What hurts?”

“Everything,” I said.  Then I waited to be told I didn’t have a fever but I could take two Tylenol and be on my way.  “Okay,” I said.  I actually walked out into the hall like I was going back to class.  And then, when the nurse was busy in the supply closet, I snuck in and grabbed the pamphlet. 

That’s the worst part – the sneaking around.  If your dad drinks, you hide it.  Otherwise everyone will know and whisper about you behind your back.  “We don’t air our dirty laundry in public,” my nana said once, when the subject came up.  “Our business is our business.  You want to talk about it, you come to me.”

“I don’t get that expression,” I told her. “Airing your dirty laundry.  Why would anyone want to smell our underwear?” But what Nana said stuck with me. 

That is why I am careful about who I invite over to the house and when.  My dad has to be long gone.  He’s an architect at a firm in town.  Which means he is usually out of the house weekdays from seven A.M. to seven P.M., so I can have people over after school until dinner.  No sleepovers, though.  Weekends you just can’t predict.  I wonder sometimes what Angie and Vanessa and Tracey would think if they knew – if they saw my dad coming home after a good bender.  I think they would run and hide in the closet, afraid that he might start throwing steak knives.  I am waiting for something like that to happen myself.