Clare
- Corinna gets an instant message from a girl named Clare, a classmate who moved to her school in the middle of last year.
- The girls have two things in common: They both play soccer, and they've both lost a parent. Clare's dad died of heart disease when she was ten.
- They chat about what it's like to live without their parents, and even joke about how much baked ziti people brought over after the funerals.
- Suddenly Corinna has someone else who understands, which is good, because Joci totally doesn't.
- Joci was the first of Corinna's friends to find out her mom was sick. Corinna's parents told Joci's parents, who told Joci, who happened to be in CVS one day shortly thereafter when Corinna and her dad were picking up medicine.
- Corinna hadn't wanted anyone to know, and she begged Joci that day at CVS not to tell their friends, but Joci told anyway.
- Corinna's still mad about it—which stinks, of course, because she still needs a best friend.
- She's also having stomach pains, as she has been since her mom's death. She hopes it's just stress over Joci, and not the onset of stomach cancer.
- She and her dad are kind of turning into hermits. Deborah leaves messages inviting Corinna out for lunch, but Corinna doesn't respond, and when their neighbor Mrs. Simmons invites them over for dinner, they make an excuse. Dad's friend Mike invites him out to play tennis, but he just says he's not feeling up to it.
- Finally, Corinna agrees to go to the movies with Joci, but she doesn't want to sleep over at Joci's house and leave her dad alone—she worries that he'll be lonely without her.
- The one good thing that's happening is that Aunt Jennifer is coming from California to visit for Veteran's Day weekend. They are both looking forward to that.
- After soccer practice one day, Corinna's dad runs a stop sign and gets pulled over. He tells the cop he didn't see the sign.
- Corinna worries about his spaciness. She needs him to get it together.