Princess in Training

Page 14

OH, MY GOD! She is!!!! APRIL POLLACK WAS ELECTED CORN PRINCESS OF VERSAILLES, INDIANA, IN 1985!!!!!!!!!!!

My mom Did It with a guy who later went on to marry a corn princess.

Which is very ironic, considering my mom later went on to have the illegitimate child of a prince! Hello, I wonder if Wendell even knows this. That his ex, Helen Thermopolis, is the mother of the heir to the throne of GENOVIA. I bet he wouldn’t feel so good about having dumped her for Miss Corn Princess April if he knew THAT, would he????

Although, I guess he didn’t really dump her, if it’s true what my mom said about her and Wendell wanting different things.

Could this happen to me and Michael? Could we want different things someday? In twenty years, will Michael be married, not to the princess of Genovia, but to some CORN PRINCESS????

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! SOMEONE IS IMing ME!!!! Who could it be NOW?

Help! It’s Michael!

SKINNERBX: Hey!

Since going Mac, Michael’s changed his IM address. It used to be LinuxRulz.

SKINNERBX: How was your first day back?

Oh, my God. He hasn’t heard. Well, how WOULD he? It’s not like he was there. Or like Lilly would tell him. Since they don’t live together anymore.

FTLOUIE: It was…the usual.

Well, it WAS. My life is a constant roller coaster…joy followed by crushing disappointments, with occasional patches where nothing at all happens and I just admire the scenery.

I figured I should change the subject.

FTLOUIE: How was YOUR first day?

SKINNERBX: Fantastic! Today in my Economics of Sustainable Development class the professor talked about how in the next 10 to 20 years, petroleum, the cheapest and most effective fuel on the planet—you know, what we use in cars and to heat our homes and in ChapStick and all—will run out. See, 100 years ago, when petroleum was first discovered, the world population was only two billion. Now, with six billion people—a population explosion almost directly caused by more easily accessible fuel—the earth cannot maintain that many people with the amount of petroleum it has left. Since the population isn’t getting any smaller, oil consumption isn’t going to decrease, so in about two decades—maybe more, but probably less, at the rate we’re going—we’re going to run out, and if we don’t find a way to get at the petroleum buried deep beneath the seas—without destroying the environment—or start converting to nuclear or hydro or solar power, everyone will be plunged back into the dark ages, and people worldwide will starve and/or freeze to death.

FTLOUIE: So, in other words…in about ten to fifteen years, we’re all going to die?

SKINNERBX: Basically. How about you? What did YOU learn today?

Um, that you are going to dump me if I don’t put out.

But, of course, I couldn’t SAY that. So I just told Michael about how this weekend my mom and Mr. G are making an emergency trip to Indiana to introduce Rocky to his Hoosier grandparents. And how Lilly has stabbed me in the back ONCE AGAIN, this time by nominating me for student council president but how she’d said not to worry about it since she “has a plan”; also about how I hate Geometry already.

SKINNERBX: Wait…your parents are going to Indiana this weekend?

FTLOUIE: Not my parents. My mom and Mr. G.

I love Mr. G and all, I guess, but it still weirds me out when anyone refers to him as my parent or my dad. I already have a dad.

I forgive Michael for this common mistake, however, as he does not know—as I do—what it’s like to come from a broken home.

FTLOUIE: What do you think your sister could be up to, anyway? I mean, I would be the worst student council president EVER.

SKINNERBX: What day are they leaving?

Why is Michael fixated on the fact that Mom and Mr. G are going out of town? This is totally the LEAST of my problems.

FTLOUIE: I don’t know. Friday, I guess.

Which reminded me:

FTLOUIE: Do you still want me to come over on Saturday to meet Doo Pak?

SKINNERBX: Sure. Or if you want, I could come over there.

FTLOUIE: With Doo Pak?

SKINNERBX: No. I meant by myself.

FTLOUIE: Well, if you want to. But I don’t know why you would, nobody’s going to be here but me.

Oh, no. Rocky’s crying again.

I’m not a baby-licker. I’m NOT.

SKINNERBX: Mia? Are you still there?

But how can they just sit there and listen to him cry like that? It’s just WRONG.

SKINNERBX: Mia?

FTLOUIE: Sorry, Michael, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.

I wonder if there’s a Baby-lickers Anonymous I could join.

Wednesday, September 9, Homeroom

Well, Lana certainly didn’t waste any time launching her campaign for student council president into overdrive.

When Lilly and I walked into school this morning, it was to find the hallways WALLPAPERED with giant full-color glossy posters of Lana with the words VOTE LANA written underneath them.

Some of the posters are just like headshots, showing Lana tossing her long shimmery golden hair back and laughing, or with her chin cupped in her hands, smiling with the angelic sweetness of Britney on her first album cover. In the pictures, Lana doesn’t look at all like someone who might grab the back of another girl’s bra and hiss, “Why do you bother to wear one of these when you have nothing to put in it?”

Or someone who might tell a girl in the jet line that college boys expect their girlfriends to Do It.

Some of the other posters show Lana in full-on action shots, like jumping into the air and doing the splits in her cheerleading uniform. One of them shows Lana in her prom dress from last year, standing at the bottom of some staircase. I don’t know where, since there was no staircase like it at the actual prom. Maybe her apartment? I wouldn’t know, of course, having never been invited there.

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