Memo gets a job before Lee does, prompting a celebration that goes awry. with the parents out, Lucia has too much to drink, passes out, and seventeen-year-old Jennifer invites some male friends over for a party, which leads to her drinking too much and also passing out, leaving her vulnerable...to whatever the boys want to do.
Lee, Alma, Memo and Pilar return to find an unconscious Jennifer in the hands of the boys she invited over. Lee and Alma are angry with Jennifer for inviting boys over and then drinking until she passed out, but they're furious with Lucia for getting drunk, passing out and leaving the children unprotected. Hard lessons are learned about the problems alcoholism has always created for the Valenzuela family.
When Lee helps beautiful new neighbor Victoria get her car started, a gift of chocolate chip cookies sets off a chain of guilt, deception, lies, jealously and hypocrisy. all of it seems fairly trivial when Lee and Alma discover that Paul's fifteen-year-old friend Ariel is pregnant. But none of it compares with what they feel when Paul hits them with a revelation of his own.