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two of us were not close enough that he would ever share his thoughts or feelings with me.
    For some stupid reason, I decided to go out to the kitchen and see if I could calm them down, get them to stop fighting. I poked my head around the corner of the doorway just as my dad, glassy-eyed and lurching, threw a piece of our best china at the wall. It smashed right next to the refrigerator, pieces skittering across the floor to join others already there. "I hate you!" my mom whispered venemously. "One day you're going to die in an accident and I'll be glad!"
    "Bitch!" my dad said in a slurred voice, banging his hand down on the counter.
    They both saw me at once.
    My dad stared dumbly, his alcohol-fogged brain trying to formulate a response. Scowling, he picked up another plate, ready to whale it at me, but my mom was quicker than he was, and before I could utter a word, she strode across the linoleum and grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging deep enough into my skin to draw blood. "Get in your room!" she shrieked.
    "I heard you—"
    "Get in your room and stay there!" She shoved me into the hallway, then turned back toward my father.
    I ran back the way I'd come, crying not from the pain but the humiliation. How could I have been so stupid and naive to think that I could intercede in their argument? Slamming the door to my room, I thought I could hear the muffled sound of Tom laughing.
    The next morning, my dad was back to his normal asshole self, and since I had to talk to somebody, I talked to him. For all I knew, he didn't even remember last night. I steered clear of my mom. She was silent as she made breakfast, and that was always a bad sign. Tom, too, sensed the mood of the room and without a word grabbed a piece of toast and dashed out the door, headed for school. I was younger and obligated to eat, but I did so as quickly as possible and got out of the house myself, heading for Robert's, where I waited for him to finish his breakfast before we met up with Edson and walked to school.
    When I got home that afternoon, my desk had been ransacked.
    I shouldn't have been surprised. And in a way, I wasn't—I'd been expecting this from the beginning. But it still felt like a gross violation of my privacy, and I was both angry and embarrassed as I put books and papers back in their proper places. Had she read my letters from Kyoko? Had she seen Kyoko's picture? At least two envelopes were out of order and their contents had been replaced haphazardly, so those had probably been read. I quickly opened them up and glanced through them, grateful to find that they were early ones and dealt mostly with generic topics. The photo was still hidden and untouched.
    If my mom asked me anything, I decided, I would just explain that it was part of a class assignment.
    But she didn't. She didn't say a word. She knew that I knew that she knew about my pen pal, but both of us pretended nothing had happened and we maintained our usual muted hostility.
    I knew I had to find a new location to store my letters, but there was no privacy in that house. During the next few days, I went over every inch of my room, even went out to the garage and into the crawl space under the house, but could find no safe place to keep my correspondence. Finally, out of desperation, while my parents were at the grocery store and Tom, who was supposed to be watching me, was over at one of his friends' house, I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk, got my dad's box cutter from his tool chest and sliced a hole in the carpet beneath the drawer. I slid all of Kyoko's letters under the rug and replaced the drawer.
    No one would ever find my letters here, I thought.
    And no one ever did.
 
    It was hard for me to get a sense of what Kyoko's home life was like. I don't know if it was the language barrier, or simply the fact that she was closed and reserved and didn't share easily. Whatever the reason, there were huge gaps in my knowledge of her, gaps my imagination did its