She rips on a trying-not-to-be-straight monologue for a while. Sometimes I think she'll do stand-up comedy and just blast out of Maine and high school early, leaving us all behind. Maybe she could make my life into something funny. There was this girl who wanted to be John Wayne because she wanted to be a hero ... Only she was like five feet tall and had these really great boobs ...

"Lily? You want to help us with our Darfur campaign?" Olivia asks.

"Sure," I surprise myself by answering. "Sure, I'll help."

"Cool." Sasha bounces in the front seat. "You okay?"

"Yep."

Sasha and Olivia give each other looks.

"She's lying," Sasha announces.

"No shit, Sherlock," Olivia says and we all laugh. Sasha turns the radio up because she knows I'm not in a talking mood. Instead, she and Olivia make up fake rap lyrics to the song that's on.

"I oppress my woman, I oppress her good, 'cause if I didn't, I'd never get wood," Sasha sings. Olivia laughs.

I imagine Brian barging into the house.

Mike is there, I tell myself. He's a man. He could beat Brian up probably, if he doesn't fall over drunk first. It's awful to think this way, but I can't help it. I'm only a pacifist when it comes to myself, not my sister.

"Uh, can I tell you guys something?" I ask.

Click. The moment they've been waiting for, my sweet, goody-goody activist friends. The radio goes silent.

Telling Olivia and Sasha what happened is easy, but listening to them talk about protection orders and women's rights and survivor syndrome is hard, almost annoying, and when I get to school it's a relief to sit in study hall and have Paolo Mattias smile at me. He doesn't know anything about me and I'm so glad.

He kicks a note at me and it says, Are we still on for tonight?

I stare at the note for a minute. The Bic pen in my hand leaks a bit on my finger.

sure Meet me after study hall.

I don't write back. I nod instead and smile, little butterflies trapped in my throat, and wait for study hall to be over, amazed that I'm going on a real date with Paolo Mattias.

There are all these other people around me, sitting at their desks with the chairs attached, looking into their Calculus books or trying to read Othello for English class. I don't think any of them know anything about what is happening, about how my life is so bad and so good at the same time and the crazy Ferris wheel of it makes me feel like my head is spinning in endless circles, high and low and high again.

I want to tell somebody, and then I realize that the person I want to tell is my dad, the Faltin one, the one with blue tights and silliness.

He would definitely think Paolo was cute.

Paolo's all smiling-happy when we get out of study hall.

"I'll walk you to class," he says, leaning in, trying to carry my books.

I back away. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to carry your books."

"That's so old school."

"What? What's wrong with old school? I like old school."

I shake my head. "I'm a big girl. I can carry my own books."

He scowls at me, but the scowl doesn't reach his eyes. Still, I feel bad, so I say, "If zombies were chasing you and you had to run away, parkour style, what would you do?"

A Britney girl jostles by me. Tyler yells to us. We wave.

Paolo thinks for a second, still walking. "Are you with me?"

"Why?"

"Because then I'd have to take care of you, too."

"No. You don't have to worry about me, just rescuing yourself."

His lips relax a little bit. "Are they hyperactive zombies, or just regular slow-moving zombies?"

"Hyperactive, definitely," I say and my heart feels a little bit lighter.

He steers me around a group of senior girls standing in the middle of the hall, messaging frantically. He nods towards the corner of the hallway and says, "I'd run full force, scale the wall, break through those Styrofoam ceiling tiles and scurry through the top really fast, drop down at the fire stairs, rush up to the roof, and jump."

"Jump? It's like three stories."

"Not down. I'd jump from this building to the garage. That's one story down."

"You couldn't do that."

He smiles, all handsome confident guy. "I've done it before."

"That's insane!" I yell, and his lips relax. The tiniest flash of white teeth appear between them. I stop walking. "Could you teach me to do that?"

"Not right away."

"But eventually?"

His free hand swipes a piece of dark hair off his forehead, pushing it back. It flops down again. "Yeah. I could teach you."

"So, in case of a hyperactive-zombie invasion someday?" I ask, moving closer to the warmth of him, away from the bumping people hustling to class.

"You'll be able to save yourself."

I smile up at him. How can I not smile? "You are too cool."

He laughs. "Right."

At home, I put on lip gloss. It's my mother's. In front of the mirror I stand, lips puckered, one finger full of the globby stuff even after I've swabbed it on my lips. My finger needs to be wiped off. Nicole told me once that if you put lip gloss above your eyes it makes your eyes look bigger. I can't remember if you're supposed to put the lip gloss on your actual eyelid or above it. If you put it on the eyelid it might get sticky, so I decide to put it right above. My movements are slower than a turtle's, but inside I am so excited, too excited, and my heart beats hard against my ribs.

Bathroom mirrors are not good places to inspect yourself. Everything is too bright. My lips shine and so does the skin above my eyes. I try out a smile, my lips stretching up, but feel fake. Fake and phony and stupid. I don't even know if I like Paolo. I don't even know if I should be going out. My sad sister sulks in the guest bedroom. Mike pretends to read the classifieds, but is really drinking spiked Pepsi. My mother is running around cleaning and acting like everything is normal, which it isn't. My sister's bruises shine out against her skin. A strange man has made our house his personal bar.

I don't even know who I am.

"You been in there a long time," Mike yells, banging on the door.

"I'll be right out," I say.

"There are other people living in this house," he mutters from behind the wood.

My face doesn't look like his. My face doesn't look like my blue-sock-wearing father's either. My face looks stupid with lip gloss on it. It will be dark at the game, no one will notice.

"My first date," I say out loud to myself and then smack my leg. What a cornball I can be. It's humiliating. It's like that song I have to sing in South Pacific, about being as corny as Kansas in August.

Mike waits in the hall, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. "Where do you think you're going?"

"What do you mean?"

His breath smells like Scotch. He looks me up and down, not the way a father would, but the way one of those nasty lecherous men in bad movies do, the kind of men who pull the teenage girl into their car and lock the doors. He notices my nice clothes and lip gloss. I think of newspaper headlines: Merrimack Girl Slain By Mother's Live-in Lover.

"What you all dressed up for?" he asks, hunkering down his shoulders, taking up all the space in the hall. I feel little all of a sudden, really little.

"I'm going to a game."

"You aren't going to any game." His eyebrows raise up looking for the moon.

"Yes, I am."

"You don't care about sports. You're just going to look at the boys."

"No, I'm not. I am going to watch the game."

"I know what teenage girls go to games for and it's not to watch the sport."

He scratches his nose. My cowboy boot twitches, wanting to stomp.

"So what?" My sister comes to the doorframe of the spare bedroom. She's been listening. Her bruise has changed color. It's darker. Her makeup doesn't hide it. "Big deal if she wants to look at boys."

"She can't," Mike says, turning to her. And she gets his eyes like a snake's, like the holes in a gun barrel.

I don't want him to confront Jessica, not after Brian and the hitting and everything. The last thing I want is for her to confront another idiot man, so I say, "I have a date."

"See?" Mike says, turning back to me. "A date."

"Really?" Jessica says. "No way. Your first one?"

"Uh-huh."

"Want me to help you with your makeup?" She looks me over.

"You don't wear makeup," I say.

"I used to," she says, taking my face in her hand. "Show me what you have."

I do a little cat leap and head back towards the bathroom. Mike crowds the hall. He blocks my way.

"You aren't going," Mike says and smiles. He picks at the dirt under his fingernails.

"What?" My trigger finger itches.

He stands up straight. He is a tall man, Mr. Wayne, a tall man like you and he takes up all the space in the house suddenly and says all cold and slow, "I said you are not going."

"Like hell I'm not going."

"You aren't going. And don't you use that crap language on me."

Jessica and I look at each other. I wonder where my mother is when I need her.

My voice turns frozen and hard and mean, stronger than a voice I've ever had before, and I'm not quite sure where it comes from. "You can't tell me what to do."

"Yes, I can," he says.

And like a third grader I taunt back. "No, you can't."

"I'm your father," he says, right in front of Jessica, "and you had better listen to me, girl."

"What? What are you talking-" Jessica starts to say, but I drown her out.

"That's crap," I yell and with two hands push against his stomach-because I'm so short I miss his freaking chest. He sways a little 'cause he's a drunk bastard. I run towards my room instead of the bathroom. I've caught him off guard for a second. He barrels after me. His feet sound loud, like tornado thunder. He chases me. He grabs my shirt. I keep running. It rips. His hand whacks the back of my head. Pain explodes. I plummet to the floor. He grabs my boot, yanks me back towards him. Jessica screams in the background. I don't know what she's saying. Maybe it's not words. Maybe it's just screams. That's how it is in my head: just screams.

My hands grab at the carpet in the hall. It's no good. I think about Paolo and parkour. Try to plan. I twist onto my back and kick up at him as hard as I can. I kick and yell. He takes my head and slams it into the ground. Jessica's face, twisted and yelling, is suddenly right there and she's hitting him with her fists, making words: "Leave her alone. Leave her alone."

"Get off me," he roars, and he loosens up on my ankle enough so that I can get out from under the weight of him, and it's enough, and I'm up on my feet and running.

Something growls behind me. For a second I think there's got to be a grizzly in the hall with us, but it's him. It's this foul drunk man, my mother's man.

I scramble into my bedroom. I slam the door, but not before I see his face, two wild eyes glaring at me. I push my bureau in front of the door. I've only run down the hall, but I pant and feel as if I've been running all afternoon.

Oh, I know, I should go out there and give him the what for. I should go out there and say, "Listen, fella, let me tell you a thing or two." But I don't. I don't. I leave my poor sister out there with him, wondering about what he said, facing him alone, maybe. But there's no noise now. No noise at all except the distant yammering of the TV set.

I know he's outside my door, breathing, listening the way he does. I can't hear my sister at all. I have to be brave. I push the bureau away from my door and reach for the doorknob, but I can't turn it.

"Listen, fella ... " I start to say, but I can't keep it up. I shake too much, and I just keep thinking of my step-uncle, the one from California, and what he did.

Then I think of the way Mike O'Donnell looked at me. Their eyes were the same, that predator look.

I hear him walk away. One footstep. Another.

He is not my father. I refuse to let him be my father. That's it.