Hello? It isn’t fair. Even Tina Hakim Baba, whose father doesn’t allow her to walk two blocks to school, has been asked out by someone.

Well, she’s got breasts, so I guess that’s why.

Tina is pretty nice. When she got up to go to the jet line to get another diet soda—the bodyguard went with her; God, if Lars ever started shadowing me like that, I’d kill myself—I read the back of her book. The book was calledI Think My Name Is Amanda, and it was about a girl who woke up from a coma and couldn’t remember who she was. This really cute boy comes to visit her in the hospital and tells her that her name is Amanda and that he’s her boyfriend. She spends the rest of the book trying to figure out whether or not he’s lying.

I am so sure! If some cute boy wants to tell you that he’s your boyfriend, why wouldn’t you justlet him? Some girls don’t know when they’ve got it made.

While I was reading the back of the book, this shadow fell over it, and I looked up and there was Lana Weinberger. It must have been a game day, because she had on her cheerleader uniform, a green-and-white pleated miniskirt and a tight white sweater with a giantA across the front of it. I think she stuffs her pom-poms down her bra when she isn’t using them. Otherwise, I don’t see how her chest could stick out so much.

"Nice hair, Amelia," she said in her snotty voice. "Who are you supposed to be? Tank Girl?"

I looked past her. Josh Richter was standing there with some of his dumb jock friends. They weren’t paying any attention to me and Lana. They were talking about a party they’d been to over the weekend. They were all "wrecked" from having consumed too much beer.

I wonder if their coach knows.

"What do you call this color, anyway?" Lana wanted to know. She touched the top of my head. "Pus yellow?"

Tina Hakim Baba and her bodyguard came back while Lana was standing there tormenting me. In addition to her diet soda, Tina had purchased a Nutty Royale ice cream cone, which she gave to me. I thought this was very nice of her, considering the fact that I’d hardly ever spoken to her before.

But Lana didn’t see the niceness of this gesture. Instead she asked, all innocently, "Oh, Tina, did you buy that ice cream for Amelia here? Did your daddy give you an extra hundred dollars today so you could buy yourself a new friend?"

Tina’s dark eyes filled up with hurt. The bodyguard saw this and opened his mouth.

Then a strange thing happened. I was sitting there, looking at the tears welling up in Tina Hakim Baba’s eyes, and then the next thing I knew, I’d taken my Nutty Royale and thrust it with all my might at the front of Lana’s sweater.

Lana looked down at the vanilla ice cream, hard chocolate shell, and peanuts that were sticking to her chest. Josh Richter and the other jocks stopped talking and looked at Lana’s chest, too. The noise level in the cafeteria plummeted to the quietest I’ve heard it.Everyone was looking at the ice cream cone sticking to Lana’s chest. It was so quiet I could hear Boris breathing through the wires of his bionater.

Then Lana started to scream.

"You—you—" I guess she couldn’t think of a word bad enough to call me. "You—you . . .  Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done to my sweater!"

I stood up and grabbed my tray. "Come on, Tina," I said. "Let’s go somewhere a little bit quieter."

Tina, her big brown eyes on the sugar cone sticking out of the middle of theA on Lana’s chest, picked up her tray and followed me. The bodyguard followed Tina. I could swear he was laughing.

As Tina and I walked past the table where Lilly and I usually sat, I saw Lilly staring at me with her mouth open. She had obviously seen the whole thing.

Well, I guess she’s going to have change her diagnosis: I amnot unassertive. Not when I don’t want to be.

I’m not sure, but as Tina and her bodyguard and I left, I thought I heard some applause coming from the geek table.

I think self-actualization might be right around the corner.

 

 

 

Later on Monday

Oh my God. I am in so much trouble. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before!

I am sitting in the principal’s office!

That’s right. I got sent to the principal’s office for stabbing Lana Weinberger with a Nutty Royale!

I should have known she’d tell on me. She is such a big whiner.

I’m kind of scared. I’ve never disobeyed a student rule before. I’ve always been a really good kid. When the student worker came to our G & T class with the pink hall pass, I never thought for a minute it might be for me. I was sitting there with Michael Moscovitz. He was showing me that the way I subtract is all wrong. He says my main problem is that I don’t write my numbers neat enough when borrowing. Also that I don’t keep track of my notes, and scribble them in whatever notebook I happen to have handy. He says I should keep all my Algebra notes in one notebook.

Also, he says I seem to have trouble concentrating.

But the reason I couldn’t concentrate was that I had never sat so close to a boy before! I mean, I realize it was only Michael Moscovitz, and that I see him all the time, and he’d never like me anyway because I’m a freshman and he’s a senior, and I’m his little sister’s best friend and all—at least, I used to be.

But he’s still a boy, acute boy, even if heis Lilly’s brother. It was really hard to pay attention to subtraction when I could smell this really nice clean boy smell coming from him. Plus every once in a while he would put his hand over mine and take my pencil away and go, "No, likethis, Mia."

Of course, I was also having trouble concentrating because I kept feeling like Lilly was looking at us. She wasn’t, of course. Now that she’s fighting the evil forces of racism in our neighborhood, she doesn’t have time for the little people like me. She was sitting at this big table with all of her supporters, plotting their next move in the Ho Offensive. She even let Boris come out of the supply closet to help.

May I point out that he was all over her? How she can stand having his spindly little violin-stroking arm around the back of her chair, I can’t imagine. And hestill hasn’t untucked his sweater.

So I really shouldn’t have worried that anybody was going to notice me and Michael. I mean, he certainly didn’t have his arm around the back ofmy chair. Although once, under the table, his knee touched my knee. I nearly died at the niceness of it all.

Then that stupid hall pass arrived withmy name on it.

I wonder if I’m going to get expelled. Maybe if I get expelled I could go to a different school, where nobody knows that my hair used to be a different color and that these fingernails aren’t really real. That might be kind of nice.

 

FROM NOW ON I WILL

 

1. Think before I act. 2. Try to be gracious, no matter how much I am provoked to behave otherwise. 3. Tell the truth, except when doing so would hurt someone’s feelings. 4. Stay as far away as possible from Lana Weinberger.

Uh-oh. Principal Gupta is ready to see me now.

 

 

 

Monday Night

Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I have detention for a week,plus math review with Mr. G,plus princess lessons with Grandmère.

I didn’t get home until nine o’clock tonight. Something hasgot to give.

My father is furious. He says he is going to sue the school. He says no one can give his daughter detention for defending the weak. I told him that Principal Gupta can. She can do anything. She’s the principal.