In this part: June 13 · May 22 · May 18 · April 28 · April 21 · April 17 · March 14 · February 3 · January 10

Sunday 6/13/99

Last day of sophomore year was Thursday. A in English, B-minus in Geometry, which I've decided to be proud of. My road test is in two weeks. Please think good thoughts at my parallel parking.

But this is the real news.

At Christmas, when Jen told us, Dad went out to the garage and stayed out there with the light on. He's gone out there almost every night since. Mom said to leave him alone. We figured he was just being Dad, sitting out there with the radio on the ballgame.

Today he opened the door from the garage and asked Jen and me to help him carry something.

It was a crib. He made it. Oak from the lumberyard, sanded so smooth it feels like soap, with little rounded tops on the corner posts. He's been building it since the day after Christmas.

We carried it up to my old room, which is the baby's room now. Mom painted it yellow in May, since nobody knows if it's a boy or a girl. Dad put the crib together without any instructions, because there weren't any, because he's the instructions. Then he shook it to make sure it didn't wobble and said, "Slats are the right spacing. I checked." And he went back downstairs.

Jen sat down on the floor next to it and cried. I sat down next to Jen. We didn't talk. We didn't have to.

The baby is due July 20th.

Saturday 5/22/99

Last night a bunch of us from band went to see the new Star Wars: me, Amy and Rachel from clarinets, two trombones whose names are both Matt, and Jeremy. Jeremy's mom drove half of us and Rachel's dad drove the other half. The line went all the way around the side of the theater, and the guy in front of us was dressed as a Jedi, with a bathrobe and everything.

I ended up sitting next to Jeremy. I'm not saying I arranged it. I'm not saying I didn't.

Here is everything that happened: we split a large popcorn because it was cheaper. Our elbows were on the same armrest for the whole movie and neither of us moved, which is a long time to not move your elbow. On the way home he did Jar Jar's voice, and it was worse than the actual Jar Jar, which I didn't think was possible.

That's it. That's all. The movie was fine. The pod race was the best part.

When I got home Jen asked how it was and I said "The movie was fine," and she said, "I didn't ask about the movie." Which is annoying, because she's right.

Tuesday 5/18/99

Spring concert tonight. I had an eight-bar solo in the slow piece at the end and I did not squeak. I DID NOT SQUEAK. (Some things you're allowed to put in capitals.)

Everybody came. Mom, Dad, and Jen, who is seven months along and had to sit on the aisle and got looks from a couple of parents I would like to squeak AT. Jen stared right back at them until they turned around. Scary Spice forever.

Jeremy had a solo in the fast piece and cracked a note and went bright red and then played the rest of it perfectly. After, I told him nobody noticed. Everybody noticed. It was still good.

In the car Dad said, "You were good." Three words. I'm keeping them.

Wednesday 4/28/99

I've been eating lunch with the quiet boy from English.

He's been eating alone at the end of the long table by the windows all year. He wears a black jacket every day and hardly talks in class, but when he does it's always something about the book nobody else thought of.

Since last week, people look at him. You know what I mean. After Colorado, anybody who wears black and doesn't talk is suddenly a Suspicious Person. On Friday I heard a kid at my table say, "Watch, it'll be him," and some people laughed, and he was right there. He could have heard.

So on Monday I picked up my tray and walked over and sat across from him. My heart was going like I was about to play a solo. I said "Can I sit here?" and he looked really surprised and said "It's a free country," which is what people say when they mean yes.

I'm not putting his name on here. He'd hate that, and it's his business.

We talked about Of Mice and Men, which we're reading. He thinks George is the saddest person in it, not Lennie, and after he explained why, I think so too. Today he showed me the back of his notebook. He draws maps of countries that don't exist, with rivers and mountains and little made-up names for the towns. They're really, really good.

Amy asked if I "like" him. No. I'm also not doing it to be a good person. (OK, a little.) Mostly I just didn't want to be one of the people who laughed.

Wednesday 4/21/99

Yesterday there was a shooting at a high school in Littleton, Colorado, at Columbine. I don't want to write about the details. You've seen them. I watched the news with Mom and Jen last night until Mom got up and turned it off.

Mom asked if I wanted to stay home today. I said no. I think I wanted to see if my school was still my school.

It was so quiet. In first hour our teacher didn't teach, she just said we could talk if we wanted to, and nobody really did. The principal came on the announcements and said the building was safe and there were counselors in the library for anybody who needed them. Some girls went. By lunch there were a hundred rumors: that somebody had a list, that somebody wrote something on a bathroom wall, that we're getting metal detectors. Nobody knew where any of it came from. Somebody's brother heard it from somebody. That's how all of it went.

In band our director didn't make a speech. He just had us play through the concert music twice, and it was the first normal thing all day.

What I keep thinking about is that those kids had a normal Tuesday morning. Lockers and lunch and stupid homework. Just like us.

When I got home I hugged Jen. It's getting hard to hug her around the baby. She didn't ask why.

Saturday 4/17/99

Sixteen.

A quiet birthday, which is what I asked for. Mom made the chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Dad gave me a key to the old Tempo on a ring by itself and said, "For when you pass." Katie sent an e-mail card with a dancing cactus that said SIXTEEN AND STILL NEVER BEEN TO PHOENIX. FIX THIS.

Jen gave me a notebook. A paper one, with a plain blue cover. She said, "You used to write in one all the time. You'd hide it under your mattress like I didn't know where it was." I said, "I KNEW you knew." And we both laughed, a real laugh, the first one in a while.

Then she took my hand and put it on her stomach, and the baby kicked, right into my palm, like a knock on a door. I didn't know it would feel like that. Like somebody saying hi.

I'm still mad at her some days. It's hard to stay mad at somebody's stomach.

Sunday 3/14/99

Grandma calls every other Sunday from up north. Usually she talks to Mom, but Mom was at the store today, so she got me.

She asked how I was, and I don't know what happened, I said, "I'm so mad at Jen I can't even look at her." And then I kept going. How Jen got to go away and have her whole college life, and then came back and wrecked everything, and now everybody tiptoes around her, and Mom's tired all the time, and Dad lives in the garage, and I have to share my room, and nobody ever asks me anything because I'm the easy one.

Grandma let me say all of it. Then she said, "Well, honey, you're allowed to be mad. Just don't let it make you mean. Mad goes away. Mean sticks."

And then she said, "And you're not the easy one. You're the one it's easy to forget to ask. That's different. And I'm sorry."

I had to sit down on the kitchen floor after we hung up.

Wednesday 2/3/99

Sharing a room, week four. Observations:

• Jen sets her alarm for 6:10 and hits snooze until 6:50. Every. Single. Day.
• She's sick most mornings. I turn my radio up so she doesn't have to know I can hear.
• She took the bed by the window. I let her. Don't tell her I let her.
• Leo stays. We negotiated. He's on the inside of the closet door now, where only I have to see him.
• At night, with the lights off, we talk. When I was little and we shared a room the first time, she used to tell me stories about a horse named Pancake who lived in our attic. Last night I said "Tell a Pancake story," as a joke. And she did. The whole thing. She remembered.

She got a job at the grocery store. Cashier, evenings.

On Monday a girl in the lunch line said, loud enough, "Isn't that the one whose sister—" and I turned around and said, "Whose sister what?" and stared at her until she looked down at her tray. I didn't know I could do that. My hands shook for the whole rest of lunch.

I can be mad at Jen. Other people can't.

Sunday 1/10/99

Happy New Year, I guess. I haven't written since the last entry, because what do you even say after that.

Jen isn't going back to college. She told Mom and Dad on New Year's Day, very calm, like she'd practiced. She finished her finals in December, but she says she can't do second semester, not like this, not three hours away from us.

Yesterday Dad drove up alone in the truck to get her things. He left at six in the morning and got back after dark, and he and Jen carried it all in without really talking. Her lamp. Her plastic drawers. Her shower caddy. A poster of the Eiffel Tower, which she was going to see someday.

So here's the new plan, which nobody asked me about: my old room (Mom's sewing room since September) is going to be the baby's room, and Jen moves into the big room with me. We shared a room until I was seven. Mom says we "know how."

I had my own big room for four months. Four months!

I know it's selfish to be upset about a room. I know. That's why I'm writing it here instead of saying it at supper.

The price of a stamp went up to 33 cents today. Dad mentioned it at supper. That was the whole conversation at supper.