Michaeclass="underline" (to me) So does this guy (he pointed at Lars) have to follow you around everywhere from now on?
Me:Yes.
Michaeclass="underline" Really?Everywhere?
Me:Everywhere except the ladies’ room. Then he waits outside.
Michaeclass="underline" What if you were to go on a date? Like to the Cultural Diversity Dance this weekend?
Me:That hasn’t exactly been an issue, considering that no one’s asked me.
Boris:(leaning out of the supply closet) Excuse me. I accidentally knocked over a bottle of rubber cement with my bow, and it’s getting hard to breathe. Can I come out now?
Everyone in the G & T room:NO!!!
Mrs. Hilclass="underline" (poking her head in from the hallway) What’s all this noise in here? We can hardly hear ourselves think in the teachers’ lounge. Boris, why are you in the supply closet? Come out now. Everybody else, get back to work!
I need to take a closer look at that article in today’sPost. Three hundred million dollars?? That’s as much as Oprah made last year!
So if we’re so rich, how come the TV in my room is only black and white?
Note to self: Look up the wordsempirical andlibidinous
Wednesday Night
No wonder my dad was so mad about Carol Fernandez’s article! When Lars and I walked out of Albert Einstein after my review session there were reporters all over the place. I am not even kidding. It was just like I was a murderer, or a celebrity, or something.
According to Mr. Gianini, who walked out with us, reporters have been arriving all day. There were vans there from New York One, Fox News, CNN,Entertainment Tonight —you name it. They’ve been trying to interview all the kids who go to Albert Einstein, asking them if they know me (for once, being unpopular pays off; I can’t imagine they were able to find anybody who could actually remember who I was—at least, not with my new nontriangular hair). Mr. G says Principal Gupta finally had to call the police, because Albert Einstein High is private property and the reporters were trespassing all over, dropping cigarette butts on the steps and blocking the sidewalk and leaning on Joe and stuff.
Which, if you think about it, is exactly what all the popular kids do when they hang around the school grounds after the last bell rings, and Principal Gupta never calls the cops onthem . . . but then again, I guess their parents are paying tuition.
I have to say, I sort of know now how Princess Diana must have felt. I mean, when Lars and Mr. G and I came out, the reporters started trying to swarm all over, waving microphones at us and yelling stuff like, "Amelia, how about a smile?" and "Amelia, what’s it like to wake up one morning the product of a single-parent family and go to bed the next night a royal princess worth over three hundred million dollars?"
I was kind of scared. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have answered their questions, because I didn’t know which microphone to talk into. Plus I was practically rendered blind by all the flashbulbs going off in front of my face.
Then Lars went into action. You should have seen it. First, he told me not to say anything. Then he put his arm around me. He told Mr. G to put his arm around my other side. Then, I don’t know how, but we ducked our heads and barreled through all the cameras and microphones and the people attached to them, until the next thing I knew, Lars was pushing me into the backseat of my dad’s car and jumping in after me.
Hello! I guess all that training in the Israeli army paid off. (I overheard Lars telling Wahim that’s where he’d learned how to work an Uzi. Wahim and Lars actually have some mutual friends, it turns out. I guess all bodyguards go to the same training school out in the Gobi Desert.)
Anyway, as soon as Lars slammed the back door shut, he said "Drive," and the guy behind the wheel hit the gas. I didn’t recognize him, but sitting in the passenger seat beside him was my dad. And while we’re pulling away, brakes squealing, flashbulbs going off, reporters jumping onto the windshield to get a better shot, my dad goes, all casual, "So. How was your day, Mia?"
Geez!
I decided to ignore my dad. Instead, I turned around in my seat to wave good-bye to Mr. G. Only Mr. G had been swallowed up in a sea of microphones! He wouldn’t talk to them, though. He just kept waving his hands at them and trying to head for the subway, so he could take the E train home.
I felt sorry for poor Mr. Gianini then. True, he had probably stuck his tongue in my mom’s mouth, but he’s a really nice guy and doesn’t deserve to be harassed by the media.
I said so to my dad, also that we should have given Mr. G a ride home, and he just got huffy and tugged on his seat belt. He said, "Damn these things. They always choke me."
So then I asked my dad where I was going to go to school now.
My dad looked at me like I was nuts. "You said you wanted to stay at Albert Einstein!" he kind of yelled.
I said, well, yes, but that was before Carol Fernandez outed me.
Then my dad wanted to know what outing was, so I explained to him that outing is when somebody reveals your sexual orientation on national TV, or in the newspaper, or in some other large public forum. Only in this case, I explained, instead of my sexual orientation, my royal status had been revealed.
So then my dad said I couldn’t go to a new school just because I’d been outed as being a princess. He said I have to stay at Albert Einstein, and Lars will go to class with me and protect me from reporters.
So then I asked him who’ll drive him around, and he pointed to the new guy, Hans.
The new guy nodded to me in the rearview mirror and said, "Hi."
So then I said, "Lars is going to go with me everywhere I go?" Like how about if I just wanted to walk over to Lilly’s? I mean, if Lilly and I were still friends. Which is certainly never going to happen now.