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say. “Is this what he turns into, hanging around you? A lying, Ebonics-talking—”
    “Stop it, Mother!” Walter said. He was trying to keep his voice down, even though the people at the table next to us had already begun to stare.
    I gave her a funny look, not quite sure what she meant by her little comment. She ignored me.
    “Walter, I am so disappointed in you. Let’s go,” she said.
    Walter blew a frustrated breath, then stared at his mother before sitting back down. “I’ll be home when I’m finished.”
    His mother’s mouth dropped open. “Wha—”
    Walter snapped his head toward his mother. “I said, I’ll be home when I’m finished!”
    His mother looked like she was about to go off, but then she looked around at the people who had started to stare, and she must’ve decided against it. “We will finish this conversation at home. I expect you there by ten o’clock!” she said.
    With that, she turned and stormed out of the restaurant.
    I eased back into my seat. “Why didn’t you tell me you had an exam?”
    “It’s just the S.A.T. I’ve already taken it and aced it, but my mother wants me to take it again to score even higher so that I can qualify for this prestigious award she wants me to have.” He lowered his head and began toying with his napkin. “I just want to be an ordinary guy. Not some superstar senator’s son.”
    I took his hand and squeezed it. I felt bad for him. Shoot, I felt bad for us, because I couldn’t help but feel like there was no way I’d ever get his mother to like me.

8
Alexis
    I don’t believe you spent fifteen thousand dollars!” My father’s voice roared through the house.
    I immediately jumped up and turned up the volume on the stereo system me and the girls were listening to. We all had been practicing interviewing each other. Now we were just lounging around my family room, listening to music.
    Although I tried to focus on my friends, I couldn’t help but think about my parents fighting—again. That they had to choose this particular time to fight only made me even angrier. They knew I had company.
    “Since when did I have to check with you before I spend money? It’s my money, too!” my mother shouted.
    Why did it sound like they were in the same room with me? We were in the downstairs family room. My parents were in my father’s office, right next door. Still, you’d think in this big ol’ house you wouldn’t be able to hear through the walls like this.
    “Fifteen thousand dollars? I can’t believe you think it’s okay to spend five grand on a few measly outfits. This makes no sense,” I heard my father shout.
    I couldn’t turn the music up any higher without my friends knowing exactly what I was trying to do. It would be way too obvious, not to mention even more embarrassing. Besides, I know my friends heard them already. Heck, the whole neighborhood heard them.
    “What makes no sense is this conversation. When you wanted a new motorcycle, I didn’t start screaming because you went out and spent money on a bike that you’ve conveniently lost interest in. Now you want to try and itemize the things that I buy. Necessary things,” my mother yelled. My mother was always yelling at my father.
    I heard a crashing noise, then my father’s voice. “Necessary? How exactly does pairs of Manolo Blaniks for seventeen hundred dollars each keep our family together?” my father screamed. “Then there’s the day at the spa for twenty-three hundred dollars? What exactly did they do to you there? You spend money like I make it in the backyard or something!”
    “These are things that make me feel good about myself,” my mother responded.
    I rolled my eyes toward the wall. I wished I was anywhere but home, stuck in the middle of a sleepover gone terribly wrong, listening to the latest of my parents’ many fights. This time it was about money. Last time it was a fight over renovating the family room. The time before that it was about our family