It would be easy to blame my dad for the whole thing--the divorce, the new apartment. But if I blamed anyone, it was my mother. Why did she have to be so calm, so placid? At least my father cried. At least he was in pain. My mother said nothing, revealed nothing. Our family broke up, and she just went on. It wasn't right.

When we got home from the beach that summer, my dad had already moved out--his first-edition Heming ways, his chess set, his Billy Joel CDs, Claude. Claude was his cat, and he belonged to my dad in a way that he didn't to anyone else. It was only right that he took Claude. Still, I was sad. In a way, Claude being gone was almost worse than my dad, because Claude was so permanent in the way he lived in our house, the way he inhabited every single space. It was like he owned the place.

My dad took me out for lunch to Applebee's, and he said, apologetically, "I'm sorry I took Claude. Do you miss him?" He had Russian dressing on his beard, newly grown out, for most of the lunch. It was annoying. The beard was annoying; the lunch was annoying.

"No," I said. I couldn't look up from my French onion soup. "He's yours anyway."

So my father got Claude, and my mother got Steven and me. It worked out for everyone. We saw my father most weekends. We'd stay at his new apartment that smelled like mildew, no matter how much incense he lit.

I hated incense, and so did my mother. It made me sneeze. I think it made my father feel independent and exotic to light all the incense he wanted, in his new pad, as he called it. As soon as I walked into the apartment, I said accusingly, "Have you been lighting incense in here?" Had he forgotten about my allergy already?

Guiltily, my father admitted that yes, he had lit some; incense, but he wouldn't do it anymore. He still did, though. He did it when I wasn't there, out the window, but I could still smell the stuff.

It was a two-bedroom apartment; he slept in the master bedroom, and I slept in the other one in a little twin bed with pink sheets. My brother slept on the pullout couch. Which, I was actually jealous of, because he got to stay up watching TV. All my room had was a bed and a white dresser set that I barely even used. Only one drawer had clothes in it. The rest were empty. There was a bookshelf too, with books my father had bought for me. My father was always buying me books. He kept hoping I'd turn out smart like him, someone who loved words, loved to read. I did like to read, but not the way he wanted me to. Not in the way of being, like, a scholar. I liked novels, not nonfiction. And I hated those scratchy pink sheets. If he had asked me, I would have told him yellow, not pink.

He did try, though. In his own way, he tried. He bought a secondhand piano and crammed it into the dining room, just for me. So I could still practice even when I stayed over there, he said. I hardly did, though-- the piano was out of tune, and I never had the heart to tell him.

It's part of why I longed for summer. It meant I didn't have to stay at my father's sad little apartment. It wasn't that I didn't like seeing him: I did. I missed him so much. But that apartment, it was depressing. I wished I could see him at our house. Our real house. I wished it could be like it used to be. And since my mother had us most of the summer, he took Steven and me on a trip when we got back. Usually it was to Florida to see our grandmother. We called her Granna. It was a depressing trip too--Granna spent the whole time trying to convince him to get back together with my mother, whom she adored. "Have you talked with Laurel lately?" she'd ask, even way long after the divorce.

I hated hearing her nag him about it; it wasn't like it was in his control anyway. It was humiliating, because it was my mother who had split up with him. It was she who had precipitated the divorce, had pushed the whole thing, I knew that much for sure. My father would have been perfectly content carrying on, living in our blue two-story with Claude and all his books. My dad once told me that Winston Churchill said that Russia was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. According to my dad, Churchill had been talking about my mother. This was before the divorce, and he said it half-bitterly, half-respectfully. Because even when he hated her, he admired her.

I think he would have stayed with her forever, trying to figure out the mystery. He was a puzzle solver, the kind of person who likes theorems, theories. X always had to equal something. It couldn't just be X.

To me, my mother wasn't that mysterious. She was my mother. Always reasonable, always sure of herself. To me, she was about as mysterious as a glass of water. She knew what she wanted; she knew what she didn't want. And that was to be married to my father. I wasn't sure if it was that she fell out of love or if it was that she just never was. In love, I mean.

When we were at Granna's, my mother took off on one of her trips. She'd go to far-off places like Hungary or Alaska. She always went alone. She took pictures, but I never asked to look at them, and she never asked if I wanted to.

chapter thirteen

I was sitting in an Adirondack chair eating toast and reading a magazine when my mother came out and joined me. She had that serious look on her face, her look of purpose, the one she got when she wanted to have one of her mother-daughter talks. I dreaded those talks the same way I dreaded my period.

"What are you doing today?" she asked me casually.

I stuffed the rest of my toast into my mouth. "This?"

"Maybe you could get started on your summer reading for AP English," she said, reaching over and brushing some crumbs off my chin.

"Yeah, I was planning on it," I said, even though I hadn't been.

My mother cleared her throat. "Is Conrad doing drugs?" she asked me.

"What?"

"Is Conrad doing drugs?"

I almost choked. "No! Why are you asking me anyway? Conrad doesn't talk to me. Ask Steven."

"I already did. He doesn't know. He wouldn't lie," she said, peering at me.

"Well, I wouldn't either!"

My mother sighed. "I know. Beck's worried. He's been acting differently.

He quit football ..."

"I quit dance," I said, rolling my eyes. "And you don't see me running around with a crack pipe."

She pursed her lips. "Will you promise to tell me if you hear something?"

"I don't know . . . ," I said teasingly. I didn't need to promise her. I knew Conrad wasn't doing drugs. A beer was one thing, but he would never do drugs. I would bet my life on it.

"Belly, this is serious."

"Mom, chill. He's not doing drugs. When'd you turn into such a narc, anyway? You're one to talk." I elbowed her playfully.

She bit back a smile and shook her head. "Don't start."

chapter fourteen

AGE 13

The first time they did it, they thought we didn't know. It was actually pretty stupid of them, because it was one of those rare nights when we were all at home. We were in the living room. Conrad was listening to music with his headphones on, and Jeremiah and Steven were playing a video game. I was sitting on the La-Z-Boy reading Emma --mostly because I thought it made me look smart, not really because I enjoyed it. If I was reading for real, I would be locked in my room with Flowers in the Attic or something and not Jane Austen.

I think Steven smelled it first. He looked around, sniffed like a dog, and then said, "Do you guys smell that?"