California Diaries consists of diaries from five characters in three rounds: round one’s review is here.

We open round two with Sunny, who is…still not doing well. Her last diary ended with her trying to run away from home with an older teenager, which ended in her being rescued by Ducky in the middle of the night. Her home life has deteriorated further, and she’s started crashing at Dawn’s place, where the attention she’s giving Dawn’s stepmother Carol is adding to the growing tension in the girls’ relationship. Dawn tries to get on with Carol, but the woman is immature, and — really, shouldn’t Sunny be focused on HER mother? You know, the woman dying of lung cancer? It’s not that Sunny doesn’t want to be there, but facing the increasingly imminent reality of her mother’s death isn’t something she appears able to do. Instead, she seeks escape in the attentions of older boys and the excitement of cutting classes to go rollerblading at Venice Beach. Although Sunny’s self-absorption and recklessness are very obvious to the reader here — especially when impatiently listening to Ducky vent to her his fear and sadness about his depressed and suicidal friend Alex — so too is her despair and pain — feelings she tries to escape from. Unfortunately, her flirtations with the fellas will lead to near-disaster and a massive fight with Dawn that ruins their sister-ship. There’s a lot of “Oh, Sunny” from the reader in this book — sometimes in sympathy, but at the end in exasperation.

Dawn the devoted. Dawn the perfect and perky.
How. Can. She. Be. So. Up?
“Hi, Mrs. Winslow. You’re looking so pretty, Mrs. Winslow. Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Winslow? Come on, Sunny, let’s prop up the bed/call the nurse/get your Mom some food/tell her about school today.”
And now she’s in the bathroom, helping Mom, while I’m out here feeling like a jerk.
I should be with Mom. I would be too if my best friend weren’t such a girl scout.
I want to help. But whenever I’m about to offer it, Dawn speaks up first.
I wish Ducky were here. He calms me down.
Oh, well. He should be pulling into the parking lot any minute. With Maggie and Amalia. Just in time for our shopping spree.
Maybe Dawn won’t come with us.
Maybe she’ll decide to stay on as Mom’s personal aide.
Maybe Mom will adopt her.
Dawn and I can switch. I’ll become a Schafer, she’ll be a Winslow.

“Don’t waste time with people who take advantage of you,” I told Ducky.
I should know.
“He’s a good guy,” Ducky insisted. “Just seriously depressed. He’s been cutting school. Disappearing without letting his Mom know where he is. Acting hostile to everyone ”
“Sounds like me,” I said.
“Sometimes I worry about you too,” Ducky replied. “But I know Sunny. You’re there. With a heart and a soul. Alex is lost. You’re not.”

That’s what Dawn doesn’t see. She can’t have her heart broken at the sight of Mom’s body. She can’t look inside Mom’s eyes and see sorrows and triumphs and scoldings and kisses and late nights and lazy mornings and country walks and long drives and plays and pottery and softball games and sicknesses and years and years and years, all gone for good but somehow still there.
I can see them. It’s like they’re crowded together in a room the size of Mom’s soul.
And the door to the room is about to close.

Dawn, diary 2, kicks off with Dawn’s version of the argument that ended her and Sunny’s seven-year friendship, and shows how Dawn is really the ground of this series. She’s the most empathetic, able to see what’s happening from other’s point of view — but her own feelings are on top of that. She has some appreciation for Sunny’s pain but doesn’t think it excuses Sunny’s escapism and general recklessness. Stress is increasing in Dawn’s life in general: her stepmother has been confined to bed for the duration of her pregnancy, and Maggie is getting little….weird. Like, stressing out over her figure even though she resembles Twiggy. As finals approach and Dawn starts getting ready for a visit back to BCS-land, she yearns for reconciliation with Sunny but at least has the happy distraction of Carol’s successful delivery of a little sister, Elizabeth Grace — partially named after Mrs. Winslow. Both Dawn and Sunny are emotionally intense.

Quotes:

“It’s hard to be around someone who isn’t talking to you and keeps running away,” I muttered.
“I know,” Ducky said softly.
I realized that Ducky was thinking about Alex.

“Ducky,” I said with a laugh. “You should be a shrink. You would make a great one.”
“You think so? I was sure my true calling was the taxi business.”
“You could be Shrink-on-wheels,” I suggested.

Maggie, diary two, opens with an ominious caloric recording with the declared goal of getting down to 90 lbs. She soon does away with this, declaring it gives food too much power over her life. School is out for the summer, but Maggie is staying busy: not so much with band or romance, since her refusal to eat much while on a date has soured her interest in both her potential fella and the band they’re both part of, but with helping a local animal shelter. At first she was just a dogsbody doing grunt work, but as her mother’s drinking problem escalates, Maggie finds herself taking on more of her mother’s own responsibilities toward the shelter — like organizing a fundraiser. She’s thirteen! Ultimately, the book ends in a ….bad night for the Blume family, with screaming and crying and statuary being broken, and Maggie herself is shattered as she begins realizing that she and her mother might have different but similar problems. Re-reading this, I was surprised that she realized she might have an issue so quickly, but when the books were originally being released, it was something the reader was already familiar with, having been developed in the previous diaries through the other kids’ eyes. Plus, as G.I. Joe cautioned, knowing is only half the battle: simply knowing she has a problem is only the beginning.

Quotes:

I wonder what would be worse: Mrs. Hayden Blume, HCA Benefit Chairperson, as a no show. Or, Mrs. Hayden Blume, HCA Benefit Chairperson, shows up drunk.
I’m sick of the benefit.
I’m sick of life.
I’m going to bed.

When she poured her second drink, Dad said, “Eileen, I want you to stop this right now.”
Mom kept pouring and replied, “Hayden, I want you to mind your own business right now.”
As I wrote that, I had the strangest thought. Did I sound like that when Justin was trying to get me to eat?

“I don’t have a—” I began to say.
I stopped myself. That was what my mother said about her drinking. And she has a problem.

Amalia, diary 2 opens with intense worry over Maggie. Amalia’s been trying to ignore the obvious or excuse it as a nervous stomach, but after reading an article in a teen magazine she’s realized that Maggie may have a serious issue. A lot of the early part of this is Amalia diving into Cyberspace and downloading materials to help her understand and approach Maggie. Soon, however, her own problem resurfaces: James, the abusive ex, is now morphing into James the creepy-crawler stalker. As with her original journal, there’s a lot of art & drawing in this one: Amalia finds it easier to draw scenes than write them out, and the boon for the reader is that we get to see facial expressions, that sort of thing. (Er…to a degree.) In happier news, VANISH is starting to recover from the loss of its guitarist Creepy Crawler Stalker Boy and about to play its first paying gig.

Maggie admitted that she’s talked to me too. She swore Dawn to secrecy, but she doesn’t mind if Dawn and I discuss her problem. “Let’s just keep it in the family,” she tells Dawn.
Family.
I guess that’s what we are. Families care. Stick together. Support and love each other.

And finally, we close round 2 with Ducky, who is about to have adults back in his life. The parents are returning from Ghana, meaning his college party bro Ted can no longer destroy the house with his buds. And maybe, just maybe, Ducky can find some adult support for everything going on in his life, which is a bit much. You know, the one friend transforming into a Cro-Magnon, the other going down the lonesome road of drinking and depression, another friend dealing with a dying mom — all that. Plus, you know, high school. Except…whoopsie, they’re going back in a couple of weeks. Ducky, while being the supportive big bro & taxi driver, is struggling himself, and the girls are picking up on it — so much so that they try to ambush him with chocolates and flowers.Things bottom out when Ducky encounters Alex in another suicide attempt, one that can’t be excused as an accident– but the good news is now that Alex’s problem has become obvious to someone besides Ducky, Alex can get the help he needs and Ducky is no longer along in the burden. There are strong similarities between Ducky and Amalia’s diaries in this round — both of them sharing information with the reader on recognizing anorexia and depression, and help for talking to those with the issue, not to mention both characters being alone in being their friend’s support but then finding relief.

Quotes:

OK, nothing you can do now. Except CLIMB.
Try to enjoy it. The way you used to. It’s the only athletic thing you and
Alex were ever good at.
Just make sure the ropes are secure and the pitons are tight.
And TRUST him.
You have to.
The rocks are pretty steep.
One false move, and you could be in serious trouble.

“Ducky, are you OK?” Amalia asks.
“Yup. Fine.”
“Do you need to talk?”
You’re so preoccupied, you don’t hear the words right, most specifically the word YOU. Somehow you’re hearing HE, meaning Alex, and you reply, “He does, really badly. But I think he’s stopped seeing his therapist.”
Amalia’s looking at you weirdly. “Not Alex. You.”
You laugh and say no, not me, not Good Old Ducky, I don’t need to talk.