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boys say those things about you is because they can’t get anything over on you. They call you freak ’cause they want into your pants and you won’t let them.”
    For a long moment, Raven was silent. Then she cleared her throat. “Do you really mean that?”
    “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”
    Raven grinned. “I like that.” She inclined her head regally. “I accept your presidential nomination, Julie.”
    Julie tipped her face toward Andie’s. “What about you? What do you want?”
    Andie met her friend’s gaze. Tears choked her; she struggled to speak past them. “I just want my family back. I just want…” She made a strangled sound. “I used to think of the future and imagine myself married. To someone like my dad. I used to think that’s what—”
    She bit back the words and sat up, wrapping her arms around her drawn-up knees. “I’d hear about bad stuff happening to other people, other kids’ families, but I never thought that could happen to me or my family. I thought we were…protected. Special.”
    She turned to her friends. “How can he do this to Mom? How can he do this to me? And to Pete and Danny?” Her voice broke. “How?”
    Raven scooted over and put an arm around Andie. “It’s going to get better.”
    Julie did the same. “It really will. You’ll see.”
    “No.” Andie shook her head. “I feel like nothing’s ever going to be okay again.”
    “You’ve got us, Andie. That hasn’t changed.”
    “That’s right.” Julie leaned her head against Andie’s. “We love you.”
    Tears stung Andie’s eyes. She held out her hand. “Best friends.”
    Julie covered it. “More than family.”
    “Together forever,” Raven added, joining her hands to theirs. “Just us three.”
    “Best friends forever,” they said again, this time in unison.

4
     
    A ndie passed the next two weeks in alternating fits and states of grief, anger, panic and betrayal.
    Her father had completely moved out—his clothes and books, the plaques in his office, his golf clubs and tennis racket. Her mother had taken down every family picture in which he was included, she had emptied the pantry and refrigerator of the foods he and nobody else ate—the whole-grain cereal and Fig Newtons, his beer, the sprouted wheat bread and spicy brown mustard—not just throwing them out, but opening and emptying each one, then smashing the box or breaking the bottle.
    Within days it had been as if he had never lived there at all.
    Except in Andie’s memory. And in her heart. Andie had never realized the effect one person could have on a place, but her father had had a profound one on their home. The house was changed, it seemed empty now. Quieter. Sad. Even the smell had changed.
    Her house didn’t feel like home anymore.
    Even though she saw him on weekends, even though she knew he was trying to make up to her and her brothers, it wasn’t the same. She missed him being around. She missed the family—and the father—she’d thought she had. And, as angry as she was at him, as hurt, she still longed for him. She still longed to hear his deep voice call out that he was home at the end of the day, longed to hear the rumble of his laughter while he wrestled with her brothers, longed for the reassurance just knowing he was there had given her. A reassurance she hadn’t even realized she’d felt until now, until it was gone. She felt as if his leaving had ripped a huge hole in her life, leaving an empty place that ached so bad she sometimes couldn’t breathe.
    Danny and Pete felt it, too. Either they were even louder and naughtier than usual or unnaturally subdued. Her mother hardly got out of bed. She was listless, uninterested in her children, friends, food or any of the other activities she used to throw herself into with such energy.
    Andie had lost her father and her mother.
    Andie did everything she could to help, to make her mother’s life easier. She never mentioned her dad, never expressed her