What did they say to me? "Hello," and "You got tall," and "Do you have any girlfriends yet?" (Gag me.) That was it. Nothing else.

Then they turned right back to each other and kept talking. Forget it. They didn't stop in the car. They didn't stop when we went to a late night diner for dessert. They didn't even stop in Dawn's bedroom. That was when it got worsel I could hear them right through the walls.

How was a guy supposed to sleep?

If Dawn didn't have to go to school the next morning, they would have talked right through the whole day.

You know what? It was the first time in my life I couldn't wait to go to school.

You know what else? On Christmas Day I'm supposed to fly to Connecticut with Dawn and stay there during Dad's honeymoon. Which means I'll have to listen to all that chattering on two coasts!

I try not to think about it too much.

Anyway, after school Dawn and her friends went to a We V Kids Club meeting together. When I got home, my house was totally quiet. Well, almost. Mrs. Bruen, our housekeeper, was humming to the radio as she cleaned up.

"Hey, what’s up, Jeff?" she asked as I walked into the kitchen.

"Nothing."

Mrs. Bruen is cool. She never gets mad, and she laughs at all my jokes. Sometimes she bosses me around, but I don't mind it that much.

I saw the journal, lying on the kitchen table. A note beside it said, WRITE IN THIS IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU.

"Who wrote that?" I asked.

"I did," Mrs. Bruen said. "I'm tired of your

sister bugging you about it. Make her happy, will you, honey?"

She smiled. I grumbled.

And now you know the real reason I wrote in that dumb thing.

When I finished, Mrs. Bruen was dusting in the living room. "Like the rug?" she asked. "I had it cleaned."

We have this fancy rug — Persian or Moroccan or something — and it had gotten dirty. But now it looked great. "Wow," I said.