One

My so-called parents hate my boyfriend, Shrimp. I'm not sure they even believe he is my boyfriend. They take one look at his five-foot-five, surfer-shirt-wearin', baggy-jeans-slouchin', Pop Tart-eatin', spiked-hair-head self and you can just see confusion firebombs exploding in their heads, like they are thinking, Oh no, Cyd Charisse, that young man is not your homes.

Dig this: He is.

At least Shrimp always remembers to call my mother "Mrs." instead of just grunting in her direction, like most guys my age do. And no parent could deny that hanging out with Shrimp is an improvement over Justin, my ex, from my old prep school. Justin got me into trouble, big time. I'm so over the Justin stage.

Not like Sid and Nancy care much. I have done my parents the favor of becoming more or less invisible.

Sid, my father, calls me a "recovering hellion." Sid's actually mystepfather. You could say I hardly know my real father. I met him atan airport once when I was five. He was tall and skinny and had inkblack hair, like me. We ate lunch in a smoky pub at the Dallas-FortWorth airport. I did not like my hamburger so my real dad openedhis briefcase and offered me a piece of homemade gingerbread hehad wrapped in tinfoil.

He bought me a brown rag doll at the airport gift shop. Thecashier had made the doll herself. She said she had kept the doll hid-den under her cash register waiting for just the right little girl. Myreal dad gave the cashier a one-hundred-dollar bill and told her tokeep the change. I named my dolly Gingerbread.

Nancy and I were on our way to San Francisco to become Sid's family. My real dad was on his way back to New York, to his real wife and family. They don't know about me.

I'm