Karen and Donnie have a less than pleasant home life. They occupy the front steps during their parents' fights often enough that they keep provision hidden behind a loose stone. And it's on one such afternoon that they meet her. Amanda. Donnie is immediately smitten, Karen has an immediate best friend. But while Amanda becomes and easy out for Karen, Donnie finds himself left behind. Suddenly the fights are his alone to ignore.

Their happiest time comes the following summer, on their vacation up at the lake. The three stick together the whole time, and bring home stacks of pictures to remind them.

But that vacation was the marking point for everything that would change.

Half way through, their father left. New job, new apartment. He was supposed to come home on weekends. It never really happens. They all struggle to deal with the change in their own way, which in this family means pretending it didn't happen.

Donnie has always been a sickly one, plagued with endless ear infections throughout his life. But when his mother stumbles upon Karen's secret, in the form of an incredibly tiny body, she looses it. Battles ensue. In-patient treatment, which works until she's home again. For Donnie, it's one more thing for people not to talk to him about.

Soon, he comes to find he's turning invisible. A fact which he first fights, and then accepts. He hopes it will somehow help his sister get better. That it will somehow enable his parents to be happy together.

Neither happens.

Meanwhile, he's also lost Amanda. She and Karen seem to have gone their separate ways. And then Amanda moves back to Chicago. Her one visit back, for Christmas, ends with a fight he hears through the wall, and her leaving early.

It isn't until Karen is physically dragged from the house to be taken back to the clinic by her father that anyone finally sits down and tells Donnie the truth. When she does come out and tell him, he can only laugh. He's had it with the lies.

He still longs to help his sister get well, but nothing they do seems to work. He spends most of his free time with her, but it isn't enough for her to tell him the truth. A hard truth, which he finds when he opens his science notebook to find Karen''s latest food diary, full of lists much too short.

In the end, Donnie can't save any of them. Not Karen, who is destined to disappear. Not his parents, who it would seem never belonged together. But he can save himself. He can make them understand that they need to pay attention. He can reach out in school, try to start anew, befriend the twins who have made many overtures towards him.

An honest look at what life in a broken home masquerading as whole can do to those trapped in it. Anorexia, as seen through the eyes of those it hurts perhaps most---the powerless onlookers, destined to be left behind.

Very well written, and highly recommended. Just don't expect to smile til the end.