I've tried to write this three times since Christmas and deleted it three times.

Jen came home from college on the 18th. She was quiet all week, which is not like her, and she slept a lot, and I thought it was just finals. Then on Christmas night, after the presents and the ham, when everybody was in the living room with only the tree lights on, Jen said she had something to tell us. She stood up to say it and then sat back down.

She's pregnant. The baby is due in July.

Here is what everybody did, because I keep playing it over and over like a tape:

Mom said "Oh, Jen," and then she cried. Not loud. Just her face.

Dad didn't say anything. Not one word. He got up and put on his coat and went out to the garage, and the light was on out there until after midnight. I could see it from my window. There wasn't any sawing or anything. Just the light.

Jen cried and said she was sorry about fifty times.

I sat on the floor by the tree with a bow stuck to my sock and didn't do anything. I still don't know what I feel. Mad, sort of. Scared, sort of. And one little part of me that I'm not proud of just kept thinking: I'm going to be an aunt. I'm fifteen.

Nobody said Merry Christmas after that.

I'm back in my old little room while she's home, with Mom's sewing machine watching me. Katie, if you read this before I call you Sunday: I'm OK. I think.

If you're reading this on my front page, you might notice something. THE STARS ARE GONE.

A very nice lady who has read my page since the beginning e-mailed me to say she loves my entries but has to read them with one eye shut because of the twinkling. So I went back to my HTML book, and there's a whole chapter about color that I skipped in 1997 because it didn't have any cool codes in it. It turns out you can make ANY color there is with those codes that are six letters and numbers. I learned about background colors that don't hurt your eyes. The new one is #F3EEF9. It's lavender, but calm. I also got rid of the marquee. I'll miss it a little.

Jen comes home Friday for Christmas break! I have to give her room back for three weeks. It's still weird calling it her room. It has all my stuff in it now. (Leo moved with me. Obviously.)

Away game tonight, which means TWO bus rides, which means this happened:

On the way there Jeremy was in the seat behind me (trumpets sit in the back, it's the law) and he passed me a note over the seat. It said: "Your plume is crooked." That's it. That's the whole note. I fixed my plume. It wasn't crooked.

On the way home I wrote on the back of it, "Your TRUMPET is crooked," and passed it back. He laughed his goose laugh and a senior told him to shut up.

Then there was another note. It said "Is it though?" and had a drawing of a trumpet shaped like a pretzel.

I kept the note. It's in my notebook. I'm not saying anything else about this because Katie reads this page, and she'll IM me with a hundred exclamation points.

KATIE. I know you're reading this. It's nothing. It's a note about a plume.

P.S. Katie is *NSYNC now and I'm Backstreet forever. We both vote on TRL every day like it's the presidential election.

We drove Jen up to college yesterday. It's three hours north, in Dad's truck plus Mom's car, because Jen owns more stuff than a department store. Her dorm room is the size of our bathroom.

Mom cried in the parking lot. Jen cried in the parking lot. I didn't, because somebody has to be normal. Dad carried everything up four flights of stairs, fixed her wobbly desk with a folded-up matchbook, and then stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets for a long time. Then he said "Well." And we left.

I thought I'd be happy. I've wanted Jen's room my whole life. It's bigger and it has the window over the garage roof. Mom said I could move in, so I did, last night. It still smells like her hairspray, and it was so quiet I couldn't sleep. I went and sat at the top of the stairs for a while. I don't know why.

Mom's turning my old room into her sewing room. She says "for now." I don't know what that means either.

School starts Tuesday. I'm a SOPHOMORE.

Band camp this week. (Not sleepaway band camp, just all day in the school parking lot learning the show until our feet fall off.)

OK. There's a boy. Don't freak out.

His name is Jeremy and he plays trumpet and he's a sophomore too. I've known who he is since seventh grade but I never NOTICED him, if you know what I mean. Today we were doing the same drill set over and over, trumpets behind the clarinets, and I turned the wrong way and ended up face to face with him, and he said "Hi. You're lost," really seriously, like a tour guide. And then he laughed. He laughs like a goose. It's the worst laugh in the world.

I've been thinking about it for five hours.

I don't even like him. (I like him.)

Band without Katie is so weird. The flute section is just a bunch of flutes now.

Sunday is phone call day. The Rules of Calling Phoenix, by Mom:

1. Sundays only, after 7, when long distance is cheaper.
2. Twenty minutes. She sets the kitchen timer. The kitchen timer is shaped like a chicken.
3. If the phone bill comes and it's over, I pay the difference out of my babysitting money.

So every Sunday I sit on the kitchen floor with the cord stretched as far as it goes and the chicken ticking on the counter. Katie says it's 112 degrees there. She says, "but it's a dry heat," which is what everybody in Phoenix says, she says, like it's the law. Also Arizona doesn't do daylight saving time, so right now she's two hours behind me, and in the winter it'll only be one. She explained it three times. I still don't get it.

The good news is her family got AOL, so we e-mail every single day, and at night we IM. Her new screen name has the word "cactus" in it. Traitor.

I forgot to write that Jen graduated in June. It was long and hot and when they called her name we screamed. She's working at the ice cream place this summer and brings home the cones that came out ugly.

Katie left today.

The moving truck came at 7 in the morning. I went over at 7:05. I helped carry boxes until her mom made me sit down. Then Katie and I sat on her front step, which isn't going to be her front step anymore after today, and didn't talk much.

Last week at the mall we bought one of those best friends necklaces, the heart that breaks in half. She has the half that says BE FRI and I have the half that says ST ENDS. We both think that's funny. Like, who wants to go through life being BE FRI.

When they drove away I stood at the end of the driveway until I couldn't see the car. Then I stood there a little longer. When I walked home Mom was on our porch, and she didn't say anything, she just held the door open.

Dad looked it up in the atlas. It's more than 1,600 miles.

I don't know who I'm going to sit with on the band bus.

Katie is moving to PHOENIX.

Her dad got transferred. She told me at her locker after sixth hour, and then we just stood there while everybody walked around us like we were a rock in a river. They leave in June. JUNE. That's five weeks.

Phoenix is in ARIZONA. It's a DESERT. Katie is from Minnesota. She's going to melt.

The whole country was watching the last Seinfeld tonight. Dad was in the den laughing at it, and I was on my bed with the door shut, and every time he laughed I wanted to scream. It's not his fault. I just didn't understand how anything could be funny today.

So I called Katie in the middle of it and we watched the rest together on the phone without talking, and at one part we both laughed at the exact same time, and then we both started crying. That was the whole phone call.

I'M FIFTEEN (as of Friday) AND I HAVE MY LEARNER'S PERMIT!!!

I finished the driver's ed class in March, and on my birthday after school Mom took me to the exam station and I passed the written test. I missed two. One was about how many feet before a turn you're supposed to signal, and I still don't know. Mom was more nervous than me.

Yesterday Katie and I saw Titanic for the FIFTH time, for my birthday. (Yes. Five. The lady in the ticket booth recognizes us.) We didn't even cry until the very end this time. We're basically professionals.

And today Dad took me driving! He took me to the lumberyard, because it's closed on Sundays and the lot is huge and empty. I drove Mom's car in big slow circles around the stacks of 2x4s at about four miles an hour. Dad said "Easy" about forty times. "Easy. Easy. Brake. Easy." I think that's the most words he's ever said to me in a row. At the end he said "Not bad," and I almost drove into the plywood from the shock.

Happy Valentine's Day to me: I BOUGHT THE LEO POSTER.

Titanic number FOUR was this afternoon, with Katie and two girls from band. Afterward at the mall there was a poster cart and there he was, and I spent every cent of my babysitting money. He's on the back of my door now, so he's the last thing I see before I go to sleep, which Katie says is creepy and I say is ROMANTIC.

Dad walked by and said "Who's that?" and before I could say anything Jen yelled from her room, "That's Caitlin's husband." Dad said "Huh" and kept walking.

Two things.

1. Titanic, third time, on Saturday, me and Katie. We cried AGAIN even though we knew exactly what was going to happen, which Katie says proves it's art.

2. DAWSON'S CREEK STARTED TONIGHT!!! I taped it so I can watch it again. It's about kids in a little town on the water who talk like they swallowed the dictionary. Nobody I know talks like that. I kind of want to talk like that. Katie called during both commercial breaks and said "OK, who do you like," and I said I need more information.

Mom watched the first ten minutes and said, "Are those kids supposed to be fifteen?" and went to bed.