Another e-mail from Jo-C-rox!

     This one said:

 

JOCROX:Dear Mia,

Just a note to tell you I saw you last night on TV. You looked beautiful, as always. I know some people at school have been giving you a hard time. Don’t let them get you down. The majority of us think you rock the world.

Your Friend

 

     Isn’t that the sweetest? I wrote back right away:

 

 

FTLOUIE:Dear Friend,

Thank you so much. PLEASE won’t you tell me who you are? I swear I won’t tell a soul!!!!!!!!!!!

Mia

 

     He hasn’t written back yet, but I think my sincerity really shows, considering all the exclamation points.

     I am slowly wearing him down, I just know it.

ENGLISH JOURNAL

 

     My most profound moment was

ENGLISH JOURNAL

 

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

     I believe that Mr. Emerson was talking about the fact that you are only given one life to live, and so you had better make the best of it. This idea is best illustrated by a movie I saw on the Lifetime Channel while I was sick. The movie was calledWho Is Julia? In this movie, Mare Winningham portrays Julia, a woman who wakes up one day after an accident to discover that her body has been completely destroyed and her brain transplanted into someone whose body was okay but whose brain had ceased functioning. Since Julia formerly was a fashion model and now her brain is in a housewife’s body (Mare Winningham’s), she is understandably upset. She goes around banging her head against things because she is no longer blond, five foot ten, and a hundred and ten pounds.

     But finally, through Julia’s husband’s undying devotion to her—despite her iffy new looks and a brief kidnapping by the housewife’s psychotic husband, who wants her to come back home to do his laundry—Julia realizes that looking like a model isn’t as important as not being dead.

     This movie raises the inevitable question, If your body was destroyed in an accident, and they had to transplant your brain into someone else’s body, whose body would you want it to be? After considerable thought, I have decided that I would most want to be in the body of Michelle Kwan, the Olympic ice skater, since she is very pretty and has a marketable skill. And as everyone knows, it is quite stylish these days to be Asian.

     Either Michelle or Britney Spears, so I could finally have bigger breasts.

 

Wednesday, October 29, English

 

     Well, one thing is for sure:

     Having a guy like my cousin Hank follow you around from class to class certainly keeps people’s minds off the idiot you made of yourself on TV the other night.

     Seriously. Not that the cheerleaders have forgotten all about the wholeTwentyFour/Seven thing—I’m still getting the evil eye in the hallway every once in a while. But as soon as their gazes flicked over me and settled on Hank, something seemed to happen to them.

     I couldn’t figure out what it was, at first. I thought it was just that they were so stunned to see a guy in a flannel shirt and overalls in the middle ofManhattan .

     Then I slowly started realizing it was something else. I guess Hank is sort of buff, and he does have sort of nice blond hair that kind of hangs in his pretty-boy-blue eyes.

     But I think it’s something even more than that. It’s like Hank is giving off those pheromones we studied in Bio, or something.

     Only I can’t sense them, because I am related to him.

     As soon as girls notice Hank, they sidle up to me and whisper “Who isthat?” while gazing longingly at Hank’s biceps, which are actually quite pronounced beneath all that plaid.

     Take Lana Weinberger, for instance. There she was, hanging around my locker, waiting for Josh to show up so the two of them could take part in their morning face-suckage ritual, when Hank and I appeared. Lana’s eyes—heavily circled in Bobbi Brown—widened, and she went, “Who’s your friend?” in this voice I had never heard her use before. And I’ve known her a while.

     I said, “He’s not my friend, he’s my cousin.”

     Lana said to Hank, in the same strange voice, “You can bemy friend.”

     To which Hank replied, with a big smile, “Gee, thanks, ma’am.”

     And don’t think in Algebra Lana wasn’t doing everything she could to get Hank to notice her. She swished her long blond hair all over my desk. She dropped her pencil like four times. She kept crossing and recrossing her legs. Finally Mr. Gianini was like, “Miss Weinberger, do you need a bathroom pass?” That calmed her down, but only for like five minutes.

     Even Miss Molina, the school secretary, was strangely giggly when she was making out a guest pass for Hank.

     But that’s nothing compared to Lilly’s reaction as she climbed into the limo this morning, when we swung by to pick up her and Michael. She looked across the seat and her jaw dropped open and this piece of Pop Tart she’d been chewing fell right out onto the floor. I’d never seen her do anything like that before in my life. Lilly is generally very good at keeping things in her mouth.

     Hormones are very powerful things. We are helpless in their wake.

     Which would certainly explain the whole Michael thing.

     I mean, about my being so deeply besotted by him and all.

 

     T. Hardy—buried his heart inWessex , body inWestminster

 

     Um, excuse me, butgross.

 

Wednesday, October 29, G & T

 

     I don’t believe this. I really don’t.

     Lilly and Hank are missing.

     That’s right.Missing.

     Nobody knows where they are. Boris is beside himself. He won’t stop playing Mahler. Even Mrs. Hill now agrees that shutting him into the supply closet is the best way to maintain our sanity. She let us sneak into the gymnasium and steal some exercise mats and lean them up against the supply closet door to muffle the sound.

     It isn’t working, though.

     I guess I can understand Boris’s despair. I mean, when you’re a musical genius and the girl you’ve been French-kissing on a fairly regular basis suddenly disappears with a guy like Hank, it has to be demoralizing.

     I should have seen it coming. Lilly was excessively flirty at lunch. She kept asking Hank all these questions about life back inIndiana . Like if he was the most popular boy in his school, and all. Which of course he said he was—though I personally don’t believe being the most popular boy at Versailles (which in Indiana-speak is pronounced Ver-Sales, by the way) High School is such a big accomplishment.

     Then she was all, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

     Hank got bashful and said that he used to, only “Amber” had ditched him a couple weeks ago for a guy whose father owns the local Outback Steakhouse. Lilly acted all shocked, and said Amber must be suffering from a borderline personality disorder if she couldn’t see what a fully self-actualized individual Hank was.

     I was so revolted by this display, I could hardly keep my veggie burger down.

     Then Lilly started talking about all the fabulous things there are to do in the city, and how Hank really ought to take advantage of them, rather than hanging around here at school with me. She said, “For instance, there’s theTransitMuseum , which is fascinating.”

     Seriously. She actually said theTransitMuseum was fascinating.Lilly Moscovitz.