Zarr, Sara. Story of a Girl. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.
“I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy’s Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darren. I didn’t love him. I’m not sure I even liked him…My dad dragged him out of the car, then me. He threw Tommy to the ground and pushed me into our old Tercel. Right before we pulled out of the lot, I stole a look at my dad. There might have been tears slipping down his cheek, or it might have been a trick of the headlights bouncing off the night fog. I started to say something. I don’t remember what. ‘Don’t,’ he said. That was almost three years ago. My dad hasn’t looked me in the eye or talked to me, really talked to me, since.” (p. 1-2)
So now Deanna’s sixteen and the school slut…except she’s not. She’s a girl who made a mistake three years ago, but once Tommy has spread it around their small town, she’ll never hear the end of it no matter what she does. To make matters worse, her family is completely screwed up; her dad still won’t talk to her, her brother went and got his girlfriend pregnant, and her mother is way out of touch with reality. Her only two friends have started dating, leaving her as a serious third wheel; and to top it all off, when she walks into her summer job, there stands her co-worker—Tommy. That Tommy.
And you thought you had problems.
