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having sex before the legal age of consent. Is any of that stuff the school’s business?”
    â€œI guess not.”
    â€œExactly. Which is why I’m calling the athletic director on Monday to talk about this.”
    Mom appeared at this point to inject some sanity into the conversation. “Dan, you’re not doing any such thing. You’ll humiliate the kids.”
    â€œBy standing up for their rights?”
    She looked at Dad like he was a total idiot. “Dan, were you ever a teenager? Would you have wanted your mom calling your high school about something like this?”
    â€œWell, no, but . . .”
    Mom gave him a kiss. “I love you to death, and I love your passion”—ew, even if she didn’t mean it that way, not something I wanted to hear—“and your convictions, and it is important for the kids to know about the issues involved, but you do understand that their happiness and avoidance of humiliation is important. Right? Right?”
    Dad blushed. “I don’t know. I guess so.”
    Mom whispered something in his ear and he got this big smile on his face, which made me want to be somewhere else. Instead of fleeing, I cleared my throat, and Mom said, “Okay! Hot fudge and mini M&M’s.”
    â€œActually I changed my mind. I was thinking about Heath bars,” I answered.
    â€œSee,” Mom told Dad as we were leaving, “we like to debate important issues too!”

6
    The long weekend totally sucked. Lena was gone and out of cell phone range, so me and my step half whatever siblings just sat around getting on each other’s nerves, because I guess everybody was stressed about school. Well, Dominic was really stressed about school, anyway. Every night at bedtime he was crying about what if his friends weren’t in his class, what if his teacher was mean, stuff like that. He got very wrapped up in the homeschool fantasy. I heard him yelling a couple of times, “Amanda can be my teacher!” No thank you.
    I was actually more stressed out about soccer than school. I pretty much knew how to do school. Not to be too conceited, but I was good at it. Of course, I used to think I was good at soccer too, and I obviously wasn’t.
    Conrad didn’t worry about anything, or if he did, he did a great job of hiding it. He just sat there playing video games while Dominic and I picked on each other. No, that’s not true. Dominic made annoying noises and did all this stuff toget on my nerves, and I tried not to let it get to me, but eventually it would be too much, and I would scream at him and he would go crying to Mom, and I’d storm up to my room. Fun stuff!
    Lena finally got back to civilization late Monday afternoon. After we’d established that both of our weekends sucked, we started talking about school.
    â€œI’m totally freaking out,” she panted.
    â€œYeah, me too,” I said.
    â€œWhat are you going to wear?”
    â€œI’ve spent the last hour trying to figure out which of my new outfits makes me look the least hideous. So far each one makes me look hideous in a different way.”
    â€œShut up. You’re going to look great. Hey, can I bring my outfits over so we can help each other?”
    I hesitated for a second, and then I instantly felt bad about it. “I . . . uh . . . yeah! Absolutely!” I felt awful inside. I couldn’t believe I’d thought for even a second about telling her not to come over. Just because I was jealous of her body and, oh yeah, the whole soccer thing too. I was a horrible friend. If it had been me who made varsity and Lena who didn’t (as if), I would be really hurt if she let something stupid like that come between us.
    And yet it was coming between us. We had a good time trying on clothes—well, I let her convince me that I looked pretty in one of my outfits even though it was an obvious lie. I appreciated that she worked