"All right, Dad."

We ate in silence again, and it dawned on me that Dad and I sat across from each other at that table twice a day each weekday and three times a day on the weekends. If a meal averaged half an hour, that meant we spent over four hundred hours a year eating together, trying to make conversation — and we barely

knew what to say to each other. He might as well have been a stranger I just happened to share food with sixteen times a week.

I pushed my pot roast around my plate.

"You're not eating, Mary Anne/' my father said. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes, fine."

"Are you sure? You weren't filling up on snacks at the Kishis', were you?"

"No, Dad, I sw — I promise. I guess I'm just not very hungry."

"Well, try to eat your vegetables, at least. Then you may start your homework."

Dad made starting my homework sound like some kind of reward.

I forced down as much as I could manage. Then my father turned the radio on and listened to classical music while we cleaned up the kitchen. At last I escaped to my bedroom.

I sat down at my desk and opened my math book. A clean sheet of paper lay before me, along with two sharpened pencils and a pink eraser. But I couldn't concentrate. Before I had made so much as a mark on the paper, I got up and flopped down on my bed.

I remembered calling my friends: a conceited snob; a stuck-up job-hog; and the biggest, bossiest know-it-all in the world. I sincerely

wished I hadn't said those things.

Then I remembered being called a baby and being told to shut up. I sincerely wished Stacey and Kristy hadn't said those things.

I wished I could talk to somebody. Maybe I could phone Claudia. The only thing she'd said that afternoon was for me not to call Stacey's diabetes dumb, which really wasn't mean. But I am not allowed to use the phone after dinner unless I'm discussing homework.