I am sixteen when my mother steps out of her skin one frozen January afternoon-pure self, atoms twinkling like microscopic diamond chips around her perhaps the chiming of a clock, or a few bright flute notes in the distance-and disappears. No one sees her leave, but she is gone. When Katrina Connors' mother walks out on her family one frigid January day, Kat is surprised but not shocked, the whole year she has been "becoming sixteen"-falling in love with the boy next door, shedding her baby fat, discovering sex-her mother has slowly been withdrawing. As Kat and her father pick up the pieces of their daily life, she finds herself curiously unaffected by her mother's absence. But in dreams that become too real to ignore, she's haunted by her mother's cries for help....