Or something like that.

But of course I couldn’t tell my dad that Mr. G had spent the night, or I know he’d have had an embolism. He is such a chauvinist—he has girlfriends stay over at Miragnac every summer, sometimes a new one every two weeks!—but he expects Mom to stay pure as the driven snow.

If Lilly were still speaking to me, I know she’d say men are such hypocrites.

A part of me wanted to tell my dad about Mr. G, just so he’d stop being so smug. But I didn’t want to give my grandmother any more ammunition against my mom—Grandm่re says my mom is “flighty”—so I just pretended like I didn’t know anything about it.

Grandm่re says we’re going to work on my vocabulary tomorrow. She says my French is atrocious but my English is even worse. She says if she ever hears me say “Whatever” again, she’s going to wash my mouth out with soap.

I said, “Whatever, Grandm่re,” and she shot me this way dirty look. I wasn’t trying to be smart-alecky, though. I really forgot.

To date, I’ve made $200 for Greenpeace. I’m probably going to go down in history as the girl who saved all the whales.

When I got home, I noticed there were two empty containers of pad Thai in the trash. Also two sets of plastic chopsticks and two bottles of Heineken in the recycling bin. I asked my mom if she’d had Mr. G over for dinner—my God, she’d spent the whole day with him already!—and she said, “Oh, no, honey. I was just really hungry.”

That’s two lies she’s told me in one day. This thing with Mr. G must be pretty serious.

Lilly still hasn’t called. I’m starting to think maybe I should call her. But what would I say? I didn’t do anything. I mean, I know I told her to shut up, but that was only because she told me I was turning into Lana Weinberger. I had every right to tell her to shut up.

Or did I? Maybe nobody has a right to tell anybody to shut up. Maybe this is how wars get started, because someone tells someone else to shut up, and then no one will apologize.

If this keeps up, who am I going to eat lunch with tomorrow?

Monday, October 13, Algebra

When Lars pulled up in front of Lilly’s building to pick her up for school, her doorman said she’d already left. Talk about holding a grudge.

This is the longest fight we’ve ever had.

When I walked into school, the first thing somebody did was shove a petition in my face.

Boycott Ho’s Deli!
Sign below and take a stand against racism!

I said I wouldn’t sign it, and Boris, who was the person holding it, told me I was ungrateful, and that in the country he came from voices raised in protest had been crushed for years by the government, and that I should feel lucky I lived in a place where I could sign a petition and not live in fear that the secret police would come after me.

I told Boris that in America we don’t tuck our sweaters into our pants.

One thing you have to say for Lilly: She acts fast. The whole school is plastered with Boycott Ho’s Deli posters.

The other thing you have to say about Lilly: When she’s mad, she stays mad. She is totally not speaking to me.

I wish Mr. G would get off my case. Who cares about integers, anyway?

Operations on Real Numbers: negatives or opposites—numbers on opposite sides of the zero but the same distance from zero on the number line are called negatives or opposites

What to Do During Algebra

O what to do during Algebra!

The possibilities are limitless:

There’s drawing, and yawning,

and portable chess.

There’s dozing, and dreaming,

and feeling confused.

There’s humming, and strumming,

and looking bemused.

You can stare at the clock.

You can hum a little song.

I’ve tried just about everything

to pass the time along.

BUT NOTHING WORKS!!!!!

Later on Monday, French

So even if Lilly and I weren’t in a fight, I wouldn’t have been able to sit with her at lunch today. She’s become the queen of the cause c้l่bre. All these people were clustered around the table where she and I and Shameeka and Ling Su normally eat our dumplings from Big Wong. Boris Pelkowski was sitting where I usually sit.

Lilly must be in heaven. She’s always wanted to be worshiped by a musical genius.

So I was standing there like a total idiot with my stupid tray of stupid salad, which was the only vegetarian entree today, since they ran out of cans of Sterno for the bean and grain bar, and I was like, Who am I going to sit by? There are only about ten tables in our caf, since we have rotating lunch shifts: There’s the table where I sit with Lilly, and then the jock table, the cheerleader table, the rich kid table, the hip-hop table, the druggie table, the drama freak table, the National Honor Society table, the foreign exchange students table, and the table where Tina Hakim Baba sits every day with her bodyguard.

I couldn’t sit with the jocks or the cheerleaders, because I’m not either. I couldn’t sit at the rich kids’ table because I don’t have a cell phone or a broker. I’m not into hip-hopping or drugs, I didn’t get a part in the latest play, and with my F in Algebra the chance of my getting into the National Honor Society is like nil, and I can’t understand anything the foreign exchange students say since there are no French ones.

I looked at Tina Hakim Baba. She had a salad in front of her, just like me. Only Tina eats salad because she has a weight problem, not because she’s a vegetarian. She was reading a romance novel. It had a photograph on the front of a teenage boy with his arms around a teenage girl. The teenage girl had long blond hair and pretty big breasts for someone with such thin thighs. She looked exactly the way I know my grandmother wants me to look.