“Are you sure? I have money . . .”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Dad sent me a fat check for Christmas. Technically, he’s taking us to the movies.” It wasn’t like I was trying to buy Kaylie’s friendship. At least I didn’t mean it that way. It was just that sometimes I felt a little guilty. With everything I had to hide, the least I could do was pay for a movie now and then.

“Thanks,” she said, putting her money back in her purse. “It’s so cool he sends you cash. It would almost be worth having divorced parents if I could get paid regularly.”

I grinned. “Not regularly, just sometimes when he’s feeling particularly guilty. Like Christmas. Sort of his way of saying, “Thanks for NOT coming.”

“What do you mean not coming—don’t you ever visit him?”

I made a sound that might qualify as a snort if it was any louder. “Not if I can help it. His new wife, Tiffany, likes to think Dad never even dated before she came along, forget about the whole married-with-kids thing. She’s only twenty-nine or something, and now that they have the baby, it’s better that I don’t exist in their reality.”

“Ugh,” Kaylie said. “She’s twenty-nine? Isn’t your sister that old?”

“Almost,” I said. “Sara’s going to be twenty-six in a couple of months.”

“That,” Kaylie said, making a face, “is gross. It’s like he’s doing his own daughter.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, smiling a little. It was nice to hear this stuff out loud and know it wasn’t just me. “These days, he’s nothing more than a sperm donor as far as I’m concerned.”

“So that’s why you hardly mention him?” She looked at me like she was waiting for more.

I scrambled for a good answer—it was stupid to have brought any of this up. Dad left when I was five, and he rarely looked back, so I tried not to care. Lately, all I saw of him was his pointy signature at the bottom of the checks I got every now and then, but talking about it always led to more questions, and you could never be too careful where the truth was involved. I tried to act casual, like I was concentrating on something on the opposite wall. “It’s really no big deal,” I said with a laugh that sounded fake even to me. “People get divorced all the time.”