Princess Diaries Series: Third Time Lucky Part 16

LIKE THIS! I mean, I am in a real bind here: If I do not walk out with Lilly, I'll lose my best friend. But if I do walk out with everyone, I will be totally dissing my stepfather.

So I really only have one choice.

Lars just offered to do it for me. But I can't let him. I can't let him take the fall for me if we get caught. I am the princess.

I have to do it myself.

I just told him to get ready to run. This is one time being so tall comes in handy. I have a pretty long stride.

Well, here goes.

Wednesday, December 9,10 a.m., East 75th Street, Beneath Some Scaffolding I don't get why she's so mad. I mean, yeah, it isn't the same thing if everyone evacuates the building due to a fire alarm going

off as opposed to everyone leaving in protest against the repressive teaching techniques of some of the teachers.

But we're still all standing in the middle of the street in the rain, and n.o.body has coats on because they wouldn't let us stop at our lockers for fear we'd all be consumed in a fiery conflagration, so we're probably going to get hypothermia from the cold and die.

That's what she wanted, right?

But no. She can't even be happy about that.

'Somebody ratted us out!' she keeps yelling. 'Somebody told! Why else would they schedule a fire drill for exactly the same time as my walkout? I'm telling you, these bureaucrats will stop at nothing to keep us from speaking out against them. Nothing! They'll even make us stand out in freezing drizzle, hoping to weaken our immune systems so we'll no longer have the strength to fight them. Well, I, for one, refuse to catch cold! I refuse to succ.u.mb to their petty abuses!'

I suggested to Lilly that she write her term paper on the suffragettes, because they, like us, had to put up with numerous indignities in their battle for equal rights.

Lilly, however, told me not to be facile.

G.o.d, being best friends with a genius is hard.

Wednesday, December 9, Gifted and Talented I can't tell if Michael got the card or not!!!!

Worse, stupid Judith Gershner is here AGAIN. Why can't she stay in her own cla.s.s? Why is she always hanging around ours? We were all getting along perfectly well until SHE came along.

My life is pathetic.

I thought about going across the hall to the teachers' lounge and asking Mrs. Hill a question about something a" like why she had the custodians remove the door to the supply closet so we can't lock Boris in there any more - so she'd maybe look over and NOTICE that there's a girl in our cla.s.sroom who is NOT supposed to be there.

But I couldn't bring myself to do it, because of Michael. I mean, Michael obviously WANTS Judith here or else he'd tell her

to go away. RIGHT?????

Anyway, with Michael so busy and all with Miss Gershner, I guess I am on my own with the whole Algebra review thing.

That's all right. I'm completely fine with that. I can study on my own just fine. Watch: A, B, C = disjoint part.i.tion of universal set Collection of non-empty subsets of U which are pairwise disjoint and whose union is equal to the set of U I get that. I totally get what that means. Who needs Michael's help? Not me. I am totally cool with the collection of

non-empty subsets.

TOTALLY COOL WITH IT.

Oh, Michael

You have made my heart

a disjoint part.i.tion.

Why can't you see

that we were meant to be

a universal set?

Instead, you have turned my soul

into a collection of non-empty subsets.

I cannot believe

that our love was meant to be

pairwise disjoint.

But rather

a union

equal to the set of

U and me.

Wednesday, December 9, French You know what else I just realized? That if this thing works - you know, if I do manage to get Michael away from Judith Gershner, and I break up with Kenny, and I end up, you know, in a potentially romantic situation with Lilly's brother a" I

will not know what to do.

Seriously.

Take kissing, for instance, I have only ever kissed one person before, and that's Kenny. I cannot believe that what Kenny and

I did really encompa.s.sed the whole of the kissing experience, because it certainly wasn't as fun as people always make it look on TV.