Seventeen-year-old Grey Evans loves her job cleaning cages each morning at the pet shop before school. She loves the parakeets hanging upside down from her hair, the mice with pinto pony patches and especially a baby guinea pig who trills and purrs when she's nearby.

Even though she's convinced she'll forget to change after work one day and get to school with feathers in her hair and bird crap on her back.

And she loves her flirtatious exchange of notes with a fellow employee she's never met.

Grey doesn't love when her recently divorced mother has a panic attack that sends her to the emergency room. Or the pills her mom is prescribed, making her ricochet from controlling to raging to zombified in minutes.

How can Grey follow her mom's ever more isolating rules and have a senior year with friends, college applications, and a cute co-worker named Will?

This Willamette High series novel about family, friendship, mental health, and dating will appeal to fans of authors Kathleen Glasgow and Erin Stewart.