From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess (2 page)

So. Boring.

There are only two things about me that aren't average, but I don't think they're the reasons why Annabelle wants to beat me up.

The first is my name: Olivia Grace Clarisse Mignonette Harrison (which for some reason Annabelle thinks is fake, but I swear it's not).

I don't know why my mom chose to give me so many middle names, especially such bizarre ones. Mignonette is a sauce you can order in restaurants to put on oysters.

I don't even like oysters.

And there is a famous princess who my step-cousin Sara likes to follow on the gossip blogs named Princess Amelia “Mia” Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, whose grandmother is named Clarisse, so it's like I have two royal middle names (Clarisse and Mignonette), which I will admit is also bit weird. Sometimes I wonder if my mom was obsessed with princesses or something.

But I can't ask her because she died when I was a baby. I never got a chance to know her, which is too bad, since she sounds like someone I would have liked. She was a charter jet pilot. That's a person who flies private planes for other people.

She didn't die flying, though. She died on vacation in Mexico after crashing her Jet Ski.

I have never been on a jet
or
a personal watercraft. My aunt says they're more dangerous than flying a private plane.

That is the second non-average thing about me. Since my mom is dead, I have to live with my aunt and her husband and his two kids, my step-cousins Justin and Sara. I've never even met my birth dad, although he sends me letters and stuff. I write back, to a post office box in New York City, because Dad has to travel all the time for his job (for which he gets paid very well. I know, because Aunt Catherine is always super excited when his support check for me comes every month, even though she and Rick, her husband, have a very successful home design and construction business).

This is why I've never met him (my dad, I mean). An assistant forwards him my letters from the post office box. He lives wherever his suitcase happens to be, which is usually somewhere like Costa Rica or Abu Dhabi (at least according to his postcards).

This is “an unstable atmosphere in which to bring up a child,” according to my aunt Catherine.

My aunt Catherine and my step-uncle, Rick, provide a stable enough atmosphere in which to bring up a child, I guess, but sometimes I wish I could live with my dad. I know we'd have the best times on his archaeological digs, even though there aren't any schools or clean drinking water there, only mosquitoes and, according to one movie I saw, Nazis.

Okay, Dad's never specifically
said
he's an archaeologist, and Aunt Catherine doesn't like it when I ask questions about him, but I'm pretty sure that's how he and my mom met. She had to have been the pilot on one of his expeditions.

That's probably why my dad can only communicate with me by letter. Seeing me in person would be too painful a reminder of all that he lost (not that I'm beautiful like my mom was, because I'm so average looking, but my aunt Catherine says I have my mother's bone structure and could grow up to be attractive some day).

It's all good, though. Dad explained that when I get lonely or frustrated, I should pour out my feelings in my diary (which he sent me
—
although I never seem to have it with me when I need it, so I just write in whatever is handy, such as my French notebook, like now).

Dad says he knows someone who kept a diary for a long time, and it always helped her. I assume he's referring to my mother, and he just can't bear to say her name (which is Elizabeth) because her beauty haunts him.

Still, even though I never mention this in my letters to my dad, the thing I get
most
frustrated about is that I am basically half an orphan.

Not that anyone ever treats me this way, of course. No one ever forces me to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs like Harry Potter (we don't even
have
a cupboard under the stairs) or sweep up cinders like Cinderella (our fireplaces are all gas and Uncle Rick wired them so you can switch them on with a remote control, not that I'm allowed to).

I have my own room and everything. Aunt Catherine and her husband treat me
almost
just like I'm one of Uncle Rick's kids, so I don't have any right to complain.

Except that I do get sad sometimes that I'm not allowed to have a dog or cat (because Uncle Rick is allergic and Aunt Catherine doesn't want pet hair getting on her designer furniture or carpets).

It also kind of bums me out that Aunt Catherine and Uncle Rick's company, O'Toole Designs, has been hired to build a fancy new mall in a country called Qalif, so we're moving there this summer. Even though I want to be adventurous, like my dad, I really don't want to move, because I'll miss Nishi.

Also, it's bad enough that I have to wear a skirt every day as part of my school uniform. Aunt Catherine says that in Qalif, girls have to wear skirts
all the time
, and women have to cover their heads. It's the local custom.

I think I would prefer fighting Nazis.

It also seems a little bit unfair to me that Aunt Catherine and Uncle Rick say I can't have my own computer like Sara and Justin (because there is not enough Wi-Fi in the house to stretch to my room), or a cell phone (Aunt Catherine says I can have one when I'm in high school though, if I get good enough grades).

I guess I sort of do feel like I'm missing out a little, not texting or going online with my friends. Sara gets to, and she's only four months older than I am!

I definitely don't mind not having a TV in my room, though, like Justin and Sara. I want to be a wildlife illustrator when I grow up, so I don't have time to veg out in front of the TV, playing video games like Justin or watching reality shows like Sara. I have to practice my drawing. Wildlife illustrators are the ones who draw all the animals you see in books or on the Web or next to the exhibits when you go to the zoo.

People don't realize this, but baby kangaroos (called joeys) are born only two centimeters long, completely blind and hairless. They have to crawl into their mother's pouch, where they will stay six to eight months until they are ready to come out and hop around.

Someone has to draw this because their kangaroo mom isn't going to let anyone inside the pouch to photograph it!

That's what wildlife illustrators do.

Obviously I'm not a professional artist yet, but I took a free art test I found in the back of a magazine when I was in the dentist's office
—
the kind where they ask you to “Draw Tippy the Turtle” as best you can
—
and sent it in. I have to admit, I never expected to hear back.

So I was more shocked than anyone when the art school called our house one day out of the blue and said they'd received my drawing of Tippy the Turtle and thought I had “real talent.” They wanted to offer me a scholarship!

Of course they hung up as soon as Aunt Catherine told them I was twelve.

But still! From that day on, I knew I was going to be an artist. I mean, if I can get a scholarship at age twelve, I can definitely get one when I'm older.

Ms. Dakota, my art teacher at school, agrees. She says I just have to keep practicing, especially perspective (which is the art of drawing objects so that they appear multidimensional). Ms. Dakota showed me how to create a vanishing point in the center of the page, then make sure all the lines in my drawing met there. It's super hard.