But of course I couldn’t. Scream that. Because I was in the middle of the Gifted and Talented room. On a cell phone.

And even if it IS Gifted and Talented, and everyone in that class is incredibly weird anyway, you can’t go around screaming into cell phones there.

“I thought that might change your outlook on the situation,” Grandmère purred. “I will, of course, say nothing to your little friend about the state of the class treasury. But in return, you will help solve my current real estate crisis by starring in Braid! The fact is, Amelia, as a descendant of Rosagunde, you will lend much more authenticity to the role than your friend Lilly would—besides which, you are much more attractive than Lilly, who, in certain lights, often resembles one of those dogs with the flat faces.”

A pug! And I thought I was the only one who’d ever noticed!

“See you at rehearsal tonight, Amelia,” Grandmère sang. “Oh, and, if you know what’s good for you, young lady, you’ll mention our little agreement to no one. NO ONE, including your father. Understand?”

Then she hung up.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can’t believe this. I really can’t. I mean, I guess I always secretly kind of knew it, deep down inside. But she’s never done anything quite this BLATANT before.

Still, I guess I finally have to admit it, since it really is true:

My grandmother is EVIL. Seriously.

Because what kind of woman uses BLACKMAIL to get her granddaughter to do her bidding?

I’ll tell you what kind: an EVIL one.

Or possibly Grandmère’s a sociopath. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. She exhibits all the major symptoms. Except possibly the one about breaking laws repeatedly.

But while Grandmère may not break federal laws, she breaks laws of common decency ALL the time.

After I’d hung up with Grandmère, I caught Lilly staring at me over the computer on which she was doing the layout for the first issue of Fat Louie’s Pink Butthole.

“Something wrong, Mia?” she wanted to know.

“About the Rosagunde thing,” I explained to her. “I’m sorry, but Grandmère won’t budge. She says I have to play her, or she’ll tell You Know Who about You Know What and I’ll get my butt kicked from here to Westchester.”

Lilly’s dark eyes glittered behind her glasses. “Oh, she did, did she?” She didn’t look surprised.

“I really am sorry, Lilly,” I said, meaning it. “You would have made a way better Rosagunde than me.”

“Whatever,” Lilly said with a sniff. “I’ll be fine with my part. Really.”

I could tell she’s just being brave, though. Inside, she’s really hurting.

And I don’t blame her. None of it makes any sense. If Grandmère wants her show to be a success, why wouldn’t she want the best actress she could find? Why would she insist on the part being played by ME, basically the worst actress in the whole school—with the possible exception of Amber Cheeseman?

Oh well. Who knows why Grandmère does half the things she does? I imagine there’s some kind of rationale to it.

But we mere humans will never understand what it is. That is a privilege reserved only for the other aliens from the mothership that brought my grandmother here from the evil planet she was born on.

Friday, March 5, Earth Science

Just now Kenny asked me if I would recopy our mole-mass worksheet, because last night, while completing it, he got Szechuan sauce on it.

I don’t know what got into me. Maybe it was residual meanness left over from my conversation with Grandmère. I mean, like, maybe some of HER meanness rubbed off on me, or something. I don’t know of any other way to explain it.

In any case, whatever it was, I decided to apply economic theory to the situation. I just thought, Why not? The whole self-actualization thing hasn’t worked out for me. Why not give old Alfred Marshall a try? Everyone else seems to be doing it. Like Lana.

And SHE always gets what SHE wants. Just like GRANDMÈRE always gets what SHE wants.

So I told Kenny I wouldn’t do it unless he did tonight’s homework, too.

He looked at me kind of funny, but he said he would. I guess he looked at me funny because he does our homework EVERY night.

Still. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to catch on to how society works. All this time, I thought it was Jungian transcendence I needed in order to find serenity and contentment.

But Grandmère—and Lana Weinberger, of all people—have shown me the error of my ways.

It’s not about forming a base of roots such as trust and compassion in order to reap the fruits of joy and love.

No. It’s about the laws of supply and demand. If you demand something and can provide proper incentive to get people to hand it over, they’ll supply it.

And the equilibrium remains stable.

It’s sort of amazing. I had no idea Grandmère was such an economic genius.

Or that LANA would ever teach ME something.

It sort of casts everything in a new light.

And I do mean everything.

HOMEWORK

PE: GYM SHORTS!!! GYM SHORTS!!!! GYM SHORTS!!!!!

U.S. Economics: Read Chapter 9 for Monday

English: Pages 155–175, O Pioneers

French: Vocabulaire 3ème étape

G&T: Find that water bra Lilly bought me that time as a joke. Wear it to the party.

Geometry: Chapter 18

Earth Science: Who cares? Kenny’s doing it! HA-HA-HA-HA

Friday, March 5, the Grand Ballroom, the Plaza

For the first rehearsal ever of Braid! we had what Grandmère called a “read-through.” We were supposed to read through the script together as a group, each actor saying his or her lines out loud, the way he or she would if we were performing the show onstage.

Can I just say read-throughs are very boring?

I had my journal tucked up behind my script so no one could see that I was writing instead of following along. Although it was kind of awkward to shift the script out from behind my journal when one of my cues came up.

A cue is the line before you are supposed to say yours. I am finding out all sorts of theater-y stuff today.

Like, Grandmère, while she may have written the dialogue for Braid!, she didn’t write the MUSIC. The music was composed by this guy named Phil. Phil is the same guy who was playing the piano to accompany us at the audition yesterday. Grandmère, it turns out, paid Phil a ton of money to write music to go with her lyrics for all the songs in Braid!

She says she got his name off the employment board at Hunter College.

Phil doesn’t look like he’s had much time to enjoy his newfound cash windfall, though. Basically, he pulled an all-nighter to compose the music for Braid!, and it also looks like he still hasn’t really caught up with his sleep. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble staying awake during the read-through.

He wasn’t the only one. Señor Eduardo didn’t open his eyes ONCE after the play’s first line (uttered by Rosagunde: “Oh, la, what a joy it is to live in this sleepy, peaceful village tucked against the seaside.” CUE: FIRST SONG).

Possibly, Señor Eduardo’s dead.

Well, that wouldn’t be so bad. Everybody could be all, “He died doing what he loved best,” like they did in that horrible TV movie where the girl fell out of a tree and broke her neck the day she got a new horse.

Oh, no, wait, he just snored. So he’s not dead after all.

Shoot, my line:

“Oh, Gustav, dare not call yourself a peasant! For the shoes you make for our horses lend strength to their step, and the swords you forge for our people lend courage to their fight for freedom against tyranny!”

Then it was J.P.’s turn to say his line. You know, J.P.’s not a bad actor. And I can’t help noticing that he had HIS Mead composition notebook tucked up in front of HIS script!

You know what would be weird? If he’s writing about ME at the same time I’m writing about HIM. Like, what if J.P. is the boy me? We do have a lot in common—except, you know, he’s not a royal.

Still, I was talking to him a little bit before rehearsal started (because I saw that everyone else was ignoring him—well, Boris and Tina were busy making out, as they do much more now that Boris no longer wears a bionater, and Lilly was going over her editorial remarks about Kenny’s dwarf star thesis with him, and Perin was trying to convince Grandmère that she’s a girl, not a guy, and Ling Su was trying to keep Amber Cheeseman away from me, as she has promised she will do in her capacity as chorus member) and J.P. told me that he has no real interest in acting—that the only reason he has auditioned for every single show the AEHS drama club has ever put on is because his mom and dad are nuts for the theater, and always wanted to have a son in the business.

“But I’d rather write for a living, you know,” J.P. said. “Not, you know, that there are a lot of jobs out there for poets. But I mean, I’d rather be a writer than an actor. Because actors, when you think about it, their job is just to interpret stuff somebody else has written. They have no POWER. The real power’s in the words they’re saying, which someone else has written. That’s what I’m interested in. Being the power behind the Julia Robertses and Jude Laws of the world.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is so freaky!!!! Because I said almost the exact same thing once!!!! I think.

Plus, I understand what it feels like, that pressure to do something just to make your parents happy. Case in point: princess lessons. Oh, and not flunking Geometry, even though it will do me no earthly good in my future.