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haul the three busted cases of Enfamil out of the car and up the front steps. Which means one thing: she knows.
    I step up onto the porch and Mom says nothing.
    “I had detention,” I say, with a world-weary sigh.
    One of the boxes shifts. There’s a creak and a tearingsound, and three cans of formula drop onto the concrete veranda and start to roll. One starts to hiss, and thick beige liquid chugs out and pools at Mom’s feet.
    “I heard. This is really not like you, Andrea.”
    “I know! The whole thing is completely circumstantial …”
    But her attention has already turned to the Volvo. She marches down the steps and starts opening up the car doors. I silently beg her not to look in the backseat or she’s certain to see—
    “There’s baby formula all over the rugs back here! I don’t believe it!” She stares back at me. “Were you in some kind of an accident?”
    “No, I … there’s this girl, Joules. I guess she’s kind of wild. She’s, you know, her dad is that rocker guy who lives up on Skyline …”
    Mom starts back toward the steps. “And this, all this today, is the result of a friendship with a wild girl?” She stops in front of me and sets her hands on her hips. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of friend I’d like to have. You might want to reconsider who you hang around with on a daily basis.”
    Okay. I have been decidedly anti-Joules since she jumped in the car, but hearing Mom write her off as no kind of friend makes me want to be Joules’s best friend forever. “She’s not that bad. It all had to do with this guy, Will.”
    “Mr. Mansouri told me all about it. How you’d been fooling around in the bushes with one of the Enderby boys and somehow this Joules was involved and the two of you used my Volvo—my three-day-old Volvo!—as agetaway car. Then you scrawled some sort of joke across the detention sheet? I’d say any girl who inspired a transformation like this is pretty bad.”
    “Wait, how do you know about Shane?”
    “That’s not important. What’s important is—”
    “I wasn’t in the bushes with Shane or any other boy!”
    She takes a case of formula from my arms and starts inside. “Enough. We’ll talk about this later. We’ll also talk about what this does to our reputation as a family. And to my reputation as a caregiver.”
    “This? What about Samantha and Cici getting into Dad’s car when they were nine and ten, and driving it halfway up the block? What about Brayden breaking into the Millers’ with Tomas and Dillon and Ace and flooding their bathrooms? Wait—did Brayden tell you about Shane? Because if he did, he got it all wrong.”
    “I said we’ll talk about it later. After the babies are fed and the rugs in the car are shampooed.” She looks back at me. “By you.”
    “Okay.” The cases are cutting into my biceps, so I shimmy past her and into the kitchen. The twins are in their high chairs waiting for their 4:30 feeding. I set the cases on the counter and pour formula into two glass bottles that are all set up, sterilized and ready to go, then warm some water in a small pot. When it’s partway heated, I stick the bottles in.
    Kaylee and Kaia start kicking their edible chubster legs as they watch me. How anyone could give birth to these two and then treat them like stale donuts just kills me. They’re nearly impossible to look away from. Seriously, some mornings when they toddle into the kitchenin their footsie pajamas, with their thumbs in their drooly mouths and sleepy eyes all wide and astonished, I can barely bring myself to go to school.
    Here’s the trouble with human babies. They’re dependent on their parents for too long—way longer than any other species. Plus the whole being-born thing is like Russian roulette. A kid can be born to a rock star like Nigel Adams, who forks over major bucks to charities and is super-cool to his daughter in detention, or to the loser with a spare evening on her hands, with nothing more to qualify