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up, and I didn't want to be responsible for starting another Clash of the Calhouns.
    I wondered if Silas had ever been in my situation. I wondered if he ever lied about where he was spending the night. I'm not sure Mom and Dad would get so bent out of shape if Silas spent the night at some strange girl's house with no adult supervision. There's a clear double standard in our house andit's not just because Silas is older. It's because Silas is a boy, and I get the sense that Dad takes pride in knowing, or at least as-suming, that Silas has a way with girls. Dad was uncomfortable with me even having a boyfriend in seventh grade because he said I was too young. Mom said he was being sexist and that led to a huge blowout, so I stopped mentioning Michael's name around the house. Silas had at least three girlfriends in seventh grade and I can't even count how many hearts he's broken in all the years since we left the city and moved up here. For some reason, that seems to make Dad proud.
    I think it's pretty safe to say that even my feminist, girls-should-live-by-the-same-standards-as-boys mom would be beyond pissed off if she knew I was going to be having a sleepover not in Anna's little house with the green trim two blocks away, but in a house the next town over with several older boys who went to Orsonville High.
    I think it's also safe to assume that they would hit the roof just knowing that I lied to them because, as they've said for as long as I can remember: We will always be understanding if you promise to always tell us the truth.
    That's a bunch of bullshit.
    Parents don't really want to know the truth. They just want to know that everything is perfect and that their children are smart and happy and popular and out of danger so they can concentrate on their own problems.
    When I sat down to breakfast Friday morning both Mom and Dad were there because one of the many benefits to being a college professor is that sometimes you don't have any classes to teach on Fridays. Or Tuesdays. What a life.
    Silas was already gone. Probably picking up Bronwyn before school. I was glad he wasn't home. I'd had a narrow escape with him the other night when he asked me what I was doing, and I knew if it came up again, he'd probably see right through me, Silas-style.
    I had my overnight bag by my side. “You guys remember that I'm staying at Anna's tonight, right?”
    “Of course, honey. I hope you have a good time.” Mom looked up from the paper and smiled at me.
    “We will.”
    “What are you two going to do?” Dad asked.
    What kind of question was that? And what was with all the questions anyway? First Silas, now Dad. Why would he ask me what I was going to do at Anna's? He never asks me what I'm going to do at Anna's.
    I wondered for a minute if child robots come equipped with self-activating panic buttons.
    “I don't know. Nothing. The usual. Hang out. Watch TV.”
    “That sounds truly edifying.” Now that was the Dad I knew. Spouting big words with just a little hint of sarcasm.
    “It will be.”
    I said goodbye and grabbed my backpack and my overnight bag and went outside, where Anna was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me, with her overnight bag in her hand. We walked to school together like we've done almost every single day since the beginning of third grade.

Mariah
    I told Mom we had an overnight class trip to Sturbridge Village. I guess she didn't remember that we had one last year, when I was in eighth grade. She could probably have told you what the second graders were doing every day of the week and every minute of the day because she was a parent advisor to Jessica's second-grade class. Lucky for me they keep the kindergarten through sixth graders on a totally separate campus, so Mom is clueless about what's happening at the upper school and it somehow didn't strike her as strange that the eighth and ninth graders would take the very same field trip.
    She did ask if there was any permission slip she had to sign