Karen couldn't tell Mrs. Singer why she had to take her Viking diorama out of the sixth-grade showcase. She felt like yelling, "To keep my parents from getting divorced " But she couldn't say it, and the whole class was looking at her anyway.

Karen's world was ending. Her father had moved out of the house weeks before; now he was going to Las Vegas to get divorced, and her mother was pleased She had only a few days to get the two of them together in the same room. Maybe, if she could, they would just forget about the divorce. Then the Newman family could be its old self again--maybe. But Karen knew something she didn't know last winter: that sometimes people who shouldn't be apart are impossible together.