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avoid making eye contact with anyone. Miraculously, I’ve managed to avoid having long conversations with people since Derek’s party five days ago. However, I feel Jason Baines smirking at me from a few chairs over. This is one of those moments I wish life were a
Final Destination
movie and a random chain saw would fly from the hand of a gardener outside and smash through an open window to violently saw Jason Baines in half.
    Distracting me from my fantasy of carnage is Ms. Hoberman, loudly proclaiming, “Your parents need to sign your
Romeo and Juliet
field-trip forms by Wednesday.”
    Serena Bell is staring at me and whispering something to Kacey Madigan. I look back down at my doodles, whichconsist of a heart with an arrow through it and a small monkey face. Clearly, I have no artistic ability.
    “For today’s free-write, I want you to write a short memoir about your family,” Ms. Hoberman continues. “It can be in poetry or prose, comedic or dramatic—obviously it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as the Montagues and the Capulets, but I’d love for you to be creative and candid.”
    Writing about my family with candor or creativity does not sound fun. What is there to say? My dad hooks up with women who aren’t my mom? And that I once saw him on a date once with a brunette at Le Bouchon downtown as they sat in front of candles and ate snails on plates? Should I write that he was saying something that made her laugh? Because for an expert at making people miserable, my dad’s actually a pretty funny guy?
    Frankly, I’d rather get an incomplete than say any of that. I don’t need to dredge up any more reminders of my dad; I already get those a few times a week when I catch a glimpse of his briefcase in the front hall, sitting there like a fantasy of hello or a promise of good-bye.

 
LUNCH
    I wish I could say our cafeteria wasn’t like a teen movie where there’s a whole by-the-numbers social structure and the dorks sit here and the pretty people sit there and the theater people sit over there and the lax bros sit there and who knows who else sits who knows where else, but it pretty much
is
almost exactly that way.
    “This corn dog is disgusting,” says Kayla as she tries to bite into the soggy, khaki-colored tube.
    I gag at the sight of it. “I don’t know why you eat that crap,” I say, opening my carrots and hummus.
    “I like pizza day,” Kayla says. “When
is
pizza day?”
    Patrick Cushman walks by. “I got the recipe from the lunch lady. If you ever want to try to make a pizza at home.”
    “You can do that?” Kayla says.
    “That’s weird. Who knows how to make pizza?” Taryn finally looks up, flicking a crouton crumb off the sleeve of her tight red shirt. Her boobs look like they’re going to fall out of it. Sometimes I wish this school had a dress code.
    “Apparently, he does,” I say, with a glance at Patrick.
    Patrick smiles. “Well, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not the same without that special LO grease pool on top.” He walks on, heading over to sit with the theater geeks. At least I think they’re theater geeks. One of them is doing some kind of loud imitation of Will Smith from
Independence Day
. Patrick seems to find it amusing. I want to tell him not to encourage stupidity, because it only createsmore of it. Instead, I get beaned in the head with a French fry.
    I look up to see Brady standing there.
    “Wanna fry?” he asks, grinning at me. He sits down, reaching over to grab another of Jason’s fries off his plate.
    “Hey, dude, that was mine!” Jason Baines cries, protectively covering them. “You can’t be throwing them around!”
    For the past two days, I’ve been avoiding Brady and succeeding because he had extra lacrosse practice and meetings during lunch hour and a big game last night. They won, so now he’s full of bravado.
    “No, thanks.” I choose to ignore him and turn my attention back to Kayla, who’s dissecting her corn dog like a