Tina is one of the popular “ghetto” crowd in school, and as I left school today, I saw her standing by Dave’s locker, flirting and laughing insanely. That would have been normal on any other day, but this time it surprised me. Only two periods earlier, when I walked into English class, I had found her sitting in a corner by herself, crying. After I went over and sat down beside her, she desperately tried to control herself; then told me that her mother won’t speak to her anymore and has threatened to send her to her abusive father in New Jersey—a man she hates, judging from the anger in her eyes. All this, because she got caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom yesterday, and someone from the principal’s office called her mom. Tina lives alone with her mother. So do I. My dad died a year ago this September, suddenly, of a massive heart attack. He pulled out of our drive around two in the afternoon on what started as a normal Saturday, and the next time I saw him, two hours later, he was lying under a white sheet, intubated, with blood and vomit covering his face, the signs of frantic resuscitation efforts. Dead. He was the only person I ever felt really in tune with, someone who was vital and irreplaceable to me. Just a couple of days ago I was talking to one of my friends about Dad. She told me that she had never thought of him as someone she would “always remember,” but after he died she couldn’t forget his ever-present slightly crooked smile, his brilliant red hair, and his passionate political discussions. She also told me that she’d always sensed he didn’t really care about what you thought about him. He just cared what you thought. My life has totally changed, in the year since he died. In one way, I feel years older—I feel I have to be strong for my mom, who is not her former self, but anchorless, after losing her partner of eighteen years. Often we hurt each other deeply, because of misunderstandings in our new relationship. I don’t have a dad; she doesn’t have a husband. At least we’ve finally figured out that neither of us can replace him. There just will be a gaping hole. And yet I still fight angry, questioning battles with solitary gales of tears at night. Although my family life was disrupted by means I couldn’t control, trying to put the splinters back together has helped me to see why no child should have to grow up without two parents. In any upbringing, both father and mother play vital roles. Luckily for me, I was able to take refuge in my friends after Dad died. Even though I frequently lashed out at them, or curled up in my own pain, they still cared enough about me to continue including me in whatever they did. Peers like Tina, however, don’t have that kind of security, and all too often, in their desperation to “belong,” they end up aimlessly hanging out and trying to maintain a superficial, sexy façade. Maybe they can’t find any room to try to heal their brokenness. But what should they do? Both Tina and Anne, a high school friend who lost her dad in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, have confided to me that their pain just won’t go away, no matter what they do. I don’t feel any shame, I won’t apologize when there ain’t nowhere you can go. Running away from pain when you’ve been victimized. Tales from another broken home. These lines from a song by the rock band Green Day epitomize Tina and so many others like her, like me. Yet so do these, from my favorite song, several tracks later on the same album: Here comes the rain again Falling from the stars Drenched in my pain again Becoming who we are. For months after Dad’s death, I tried to be normal. It took a long time to realize that it just wouldn’t work. Now, whenever I dare to face the black hole inside me, it somehow makes me surer of who I am. It’s tough, but it’s worth it. No matter how a person’s life has been shattered—by a hurricane, domestic violence, AIDS, divorce, drugs, cancer or a death—the hurt, the emptiness, never leave. But in a way, concealing and hiding them doesn’t help, impossibly hard as exposure and vulnerability may be. I still sometimes wish, though, that someone would just “wake me up when September ends.”