Mia Goes Fourth

'No, I can't make it to Pam's on Friday, I've got this stupid thing to go to. I don't know, it's some patient of my dad's.

Every year she has this stupid dance where everybody has to dress up in black and white.'

I froze, my Algebra I-II textbook only halfway open. Lana's dad, I remembered, all of my blood turning cold, is a plastic surgeon. Could he have been the one who gave Contessa Trevanni her anteater face?

'I don't know,' Lana was saying, into her phone. 'She claims to be some kind of countess. I swear to God, this town is

littered with wannabe royals.'

As she said the words wannabe royals, Lana swivelled her head around — getting her long, shiny blonde hair all over

Chapter Twelve of my Algebra book - and looked at me.

Um, excuse me. I never wanted to be royal. Never, ever, ever did I even remotely suggest to anyone that I thought it might

be cool to be a princess.

Oh, sure, I wouldn't mind being a princess the way Belle became a princess at the end of Beauty and the Beast. You know,

a fairy-tale princess with no problems or responsibilities, except to look pretty and be all sweet to people.

But being a princess in real life is nothing like that. You have to make all these decisions that affect the good of your country. Like should you or should you not make tourists pay for parking? And should you, or should you not, protect dolphins and

sea turtles from pollution?

Clearly Lana has never thought about any of this, however.

'No, I'm not taking Josh,' she said scornfully into the hone, as more of her stupid hair fell all over my textbook. In fact, I

thought about closing my book on her hair, just to hear her scream, but I wanted to hear why she wasn't taking her long-time boyfriend, Josh Richter, to the black-and-white ball with her.

'He is so immature at these things,' Lana said to her friend. 'I mean, at the last one we went to together, he actually started throwing grapes down the front of this one girl's dress. I know. High-school boys just don't know how to act. Besides,

there'll be all these West Pointers there. It'll be nice to be with some college boys for a change.'

Really, I may not have had a boyfriend all that long (thirty-four days to be exact) but it seems pretty disloyal to be looking forward to going to a dance with someone other than your significant other. I mean, I am totally dreading going to the contessa's black-and-white ball without Michael.

And now I am dreading it even more, knowing that Lana is going to be there.

Especially when Mr G walked into the classroom, and Lana — who had learned a lesson from last time — went,

'Oops, gotta go,' into her mobile and hung up, then happened to glance in my direction.

'What are you looking at, fish breath?' she wanted to know.

Now, I happen to know that I don't have fish breath. For one thing, I fully had oatmeal for breakfast, and for another, Lars

is addicted to those Listerine Pocket Pak thingies that melt on your tongue and is always handing them out, and I had just

had one in anticipation of Michael possibly stopping by my Algebra class on his way to Senior English (which he did, to

hand me a CD he burned for me last night of Pearl Jam's greatest hits, even though of course I don't really like bands that

don't have girls in them, except *NSYNC of course, but I will totally pretend that I listened to it and liked it).

So I know that my breath did not smell like fish.

But I didn't get to say anything back to Lana because Mr. G told us to get out last night's homework problems

(which I actually had done) so my opportunity was cut off.

But I am going to remember what she said for ever, because we Renaldo women, we can really hold a grudge when

we want to.

Defn: Square root of perfect sq. is either of the identical factors

Defn: Positive sq. root is called the principal sq. root

Negative numbers have no sq. root

Things to Do:

1. Have Genovian ambassador to the UN call the CIA. See if they can dispatch some agents to track down my

    underwear (if it falls into the wrong hands, could be an international incident!)

2. Get cat food!!!!!

3. Check on Mom's folk-acid intake.

4. Tell Michael I will not be able to make first date with him.

5. Prepare to be dumped.

Thursday, January 21,

Health and Safety

Did you see that? They are meeting at Cosi for lunch!

Yes. He so loves her.

It's so cute when teachers are in love.

So are you nervous about your breakfast meeting tomorrow?

Hardly. THEY are the ones who should be nervous.

Are you going all by yourself? Your mom and dad aren't coming with you, are they?