Hall, Deirdre Riordan

When her uncle agrees to pay the tuition at a private boarding school, seventeen-year-old Pearl hopes to escape the homelessness and drama of life with her mother, a former rock star who has ruined her life with drugs.

"Pearl Jaeger is seventeen and homeless after drugs, poverty, and addiction unraveled the life she shared with JJ, her formerly glamorous rock star mother... When tragedy brings a chance to start over at an elite boarding school, she doesn't hesitate. Yet the only salvation comes from an art teacher as troubled as Pearl..."--Provided by publisher.

Overweight seventeen-year-old Sugar is the object of ridicule everywhere she goes until she meets Even, a boy who sees her for who she is inside.

Seventeen-year-old Sugar wasn't always overweight but she is now. She takes care of her mother in their run-down home, a mother who is so big she hasn't gotten out of bed in months. And then Sugar meets Even (not Evan, his father misspelled his name on the birth certificate). For the first time she has the experience of someone seeing her, and not her body. As their friendship builds, Sugar allows herself to think about a future for herself that is not weighed down by her body or her mother.