YA fiction - mentions smoking pot, mentions sex (and lack of enjoyment of it until main character is in love), nothing graphic. Twelve year old Chrissie Peretti has a very overweight and possibly mentally-impaired mother and a father who treats her differently when her body develops and she looks like an adult. On her 13th birthday she loses her dog and her virginity. Partially due to her father's mental abuse she looks for attention from boys and becomes quite active sexually. This will have repercussions later in her life due to an STD. Several months later she runs away from home. By the time she is 16 she has traveled to California by hitchhiking and meets her first real friend, Lissa (Melissa). When the car they are traveling in breaks down in the small town of Excelsior Springs, Arkansas en route to New Orleans, she decides to make it her new home. She lies about her age and calls herself Chrysta. She gets a job in a kitchen, falls in love (and finds sex enjoyable for the first time) with 19 year old Luke and takes in a troubled 12 year old named Dare.