This distressed me very much and I wanted to point out to them how unnecessary and unhealthy it is to eat things that were once alive and walking around, but, remembering my princess training, I merely concentrated on my entree of grilled vegetables and said nothing.
Still, I am not at all surprised Hank doesn’t feel well. All that red meat is probably sitting, completely undigested, behind those washboard abs even as we speak. (I am only assuming Hank has washboard abs, since, thankfully, I have not actually seen them).
Interestingly, however, that was the one meal my mother has been able to keep down. This baby is no vegetarian, that’s for sure.
Anyway, the disappointment Hank’s absence has generated here at Albert Einstein is palpable. Miss Molina saw me in the hall and asked, sadly, “You don’t need another guest pass for your cousin today?”
Hank’s absence also apparently means that my special dispensation from the mean looks the cheerleaders have been giving me is revoked: This morning Lana reached out, snapped the back of my bra, and asked in her snottiest voice, “What are you wearing a bra for? You don’t need one.”
I long for a place where people treat each other with courtesy and respect. That, unfortunately, is not high school. Maybe in Genovia? Or possibly that space station the Russians built, the one that’s falling apart above our heads.
Anyway, the only person who seems happy about Hank’s misfortune is Boris Pelkowski. He was waiting for Lilly by the front doors to the school when we arrived this morning, and as soon as he saw us, he asked, “Where is Honk?” (Because of his thick Russian accent, that’s the way he pronounces Hank’s name.)
“Honk—I mean, Hank—is sick,” I informed him, and it would not be exaggerating to say that the look that spread across Boris’s uneven features was beatific. It was actually a little bit touching. Boris’s doglike devotion to Lilly can be annoying, but I know that I really only feel that way about it because I am envious. I want a boy I can tell all my deepest secrets to. I want a boy who will French-kiss me. I want a boy who will be jealous if I spend too much time with another guy, even a total bohunk like Hank.
But I guess we don’t always get what we want, do we? It looks like all I’m going to get is a baby brother or sister, and a stepfather who knows a lot about the quadratic formula and who is moving in tomorrow with his foozball table.
Oh, and the rule of the throne of a country, someday.
Big deal. I’d rather have a boyfriend.
Thursday, October 30, World Civ
THINGS TO DO BEFORE MR. G MOVES IN
1. Vacuum
2. Clean out cat box
3. Drop off laundry
4. Take out recycling, esp. any of Mom’s magazines that refer to orgasms on the cover—very imp.!!!
5. Remove feminine hygiene products from all bathrooms
6. Clear out space in living room for foozball table/pinball machine/large TV
7. Check medicine cabinet: Hide Midol, Nair, Jolene—very imp.!!!
8. Remove Our Bodies, Ourselves and The Joy of Sex from Mom’s bookshelves
9. Call cable company. Get Classic Sports Network added. Remove Romance Channel.
10. Get Mom to stop hanging bras on bedroom doorknob
11. Stop biting off fake fingernails
12. Stop thinking so much about M. M.
13. Fix lock on bathroom door
13. Toilet paper!!!!
Thursday, October 30, G & T
I don’t believe this.
They’ve done it again.
Hank and Lilly have disappeared AGAIN!
I didn’t even know about the Hank part until Lars got a call on his cell phone from my mother. She was very annoyed, because her mother had called her at the studio, screaming hysterically because Hank was missing from his hotel room. Mom wanted to know if Hank had shown up at school.
Which, to the best of my knowledge, he had not.
Then Lilly didn’t show up for lunch.
She wasn’t even very subtle about it, either. We were doing the Presidential Fitness exam in PE, and just as it was her turn to climb the rope, Lilly started complaining that she had cramps.
Since Lilly complains that she has cramps every single time the Presidential Fitness exam rolls around, I wasn’t suspicious. Mrs. Potts sent Lilly to the nurse’s office, and I figured I’d see her at lunch, miraculously recovered.
But then she didn’t show up for lunch. A consultation with the nurse revealed that Lilly’s cramps had been of such severity, she’d decided to go home for the rest of the day.
Cramps. I am so sure. Lilly doesn’t have cramps. What she has is the hots for my cousin!
The real question is, how long can we keep this from Boris? Remembering the Mahler we’d been subjected to yesterday, everyone is being careful not to remark how coincidental it is that Lilly is sick and Hank is missing in action at the same time. Nobody wants to have to resort to the gym mats again. Those things were heavy.
As a precaution, Michael is trying to keep Boris busy with a computer game he invented called Decapitate the Backstreet Boy. In it, you get to hurl knives and axes and stuff at members of the Backstreet Boys. The person who cuts the heads off the most Backstreet Boys moves up to another level, where he gets to cut off the heads of the boys in 98 Degrees, then ‘N Sync, etc. The player who cuts off the most heads gets to carve his initials on Ricky Martin’s naked chest.
I can’t believe Michael only got a B on this game in his computer class. But the teacher took points off because he felt it wasn’t violent enough for today’s market.