Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life (2 page)

Only a TOTAL DORK would be caught WRITING in a DIARY!!

This is THE worst present I have ever received in my entire life! I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs:

“Mom, I don’t need a STUPID book with 288 BLANK pages!!”

What I NEED is to be able to “communicate” my “thoughts and feelings” to my friends using my very own cell phone.

Wait! Silly me. I keep forgetting. I don’t have any friends. YET. But that could change overnight, and I need to be prepared. With a shiny, new cell!

In the meantime, I will NOT write in this diary again.

NEVER! EVER!!

Okay. I know I said I’d never write in this diary again. I meant it at the time. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who curls up with a diary and a box of Godiva chocolates to write a bunch of really sappy stuff about my dreamy boyfriend, my first kiss, or my overwhelming ANGST about the HORRIFIC discovery that I’m a PRINCESS of a small French-speaking principality and now worth MILLIONS.

THIS IS SO
NOT
-NOT ME!

MY LIFE TOTALLY SUCKS!!

All day I wandered around my new school like a zombie in lip gloss. Not a single person bothered to say hi.

THIS IS ME!

MOST OF THE TIME I

FEEL INVISIBLE!

How am I supposed to fit in at a snobby prep school like Westchester Country Day?! This place has a Starbucks in the cafeteria!

I wish my dad had NEVER been awarded a bug extermination contract from this school.

They can take their little pity scholarship and give it to someone who wants and needs it, because I sure DON’T!

It’s way past midnight, and I’m about to freak out because I still don’t have my homework done. The assignment is for Honors English Lit and we’re reading
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by Shakespeare. I was kind of surprised, because I didn’t know he wrote teen chick lit.

It’s about a mischievous fairy named Puck, who tries to break up a really cute couple lost in an enchanted forest.

Then, this guy with a donkey head crashes a big fairy party and hooks up with their queen. Pretty weird stuff!

Our homework assignment is to complete three essay questions about PUCK:

1. Would you consider Puck the protagonist of the play? Why or why not?

2. How do Puck’s personality and actions set the mood of the play?

3. Use your imagination and provide either a detailed physical description or a drawing of Puck.

The first two questions weren’t that hard, and I finished them in no time at all. However, the third question threw me for a loop.

I didn’t have the slightest idea what Puck looked like.

But I tried to imagine him with cute little pointy ears and AS HOT AS:

NICK JONAS

CORBIN BLEU

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE

I was also dying to know if having a messed-up name like Puck had completely RUINED his life.

I bet the popular kids at his school called him “Puke,” “Schmuck,” “Yuck,” or something worse.

POOR PUCK
!!

I tried to go to that educational website “Wiki-something-or-other” that everyone plagiarizes to find a picture of Puck.

But I couldn’t remember the name of it and was too lazy to Google it.

I was really surprised to hear a knock on my bedroom door this late at night, and I assumed it was my six-year-old sister, Brianna.

About a week ago, she lost one of her front teeth and buried it in the backyard to see if it would grow. She is FOREVER doing crazy-weird stuff like that.

My mom says it’s because she’s still a little kid. But I personally think it’s because she has the IQ of a box of crayons.

As a little joke, I told Brianna the tooth fairy collected teeth from children all over the world and then Super Glued them together to make dentures for old people.

I explained that she was in BIG TROUBLE with the tooth fairy, seeing as she had dug a hole and buried her tooth somewhere out in the backyard.

The funniest part was that Brianna TOTALLY believed me. She actually dug up half of Mom’s flower garden trying to find her tooth.

Since then Brianna has been paranoid that the tooth fairy is going to sneak into her room in the middle of the night and pull out ALL her teeth to make dentures.

But my prank kind of backfired, because now she absolutely REFUSES to use the bathroom at night unless I first check to make sure the tooth fairy is not hiding behind the shower curtain or under the bath towels.

And if I’m not quick enough, Brianna will have a little “accident” right on my bedroom carpet.

Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that (contrary to the TV commercial) Carpet Fresh DOES NOT remove all odors.

Lucky for me, it wasn’t Brianna at my door, but my parents.

Before I could say, “Come in,” they just kind of barged in like they always do, which really irritated me, because this is
supposed
to be MY room! And as an American citizen, I have a constitutional right to PRIVACY, which they keep invading.

The next time my parents and Brianna come rollin’ up in here, I’m gonna scream,

“Hey! Why don’t y’all just MOVE IN?!”

Anyway, my parents said they were surprised to see that I was still up doing homework, and they wanted to know how things were going at school.

It was really strange, because just as I was about to answer, I had a total meltdown right on the spot and burst into tears.

My parents were shocked and stared at me and then at each other.

Finally, Mom hugged me and said, “My poor little Boo-Boo!” which only made me feel WORSE.

Not fitting in at school was bad enough. But now I had to suffer the additional humiliation of being the only fourteen-year-old
still
being called “little Boo-Boo”! Suddenly my dad’s face lit up.

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea! We know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately with our move and your new school. I bet if we posted some positive affirmations all around the house, it would help you adjust. You think?”

I was like, “Okay, Dad, THIS is what I think: It’s a STUPID idea! Like sticky notes with corny sayings on them will solve my problem of being a TOTAL

LOSER at school. You wanna know what else I think? The article I read about bug extermination chemicals killing off brain cells is probably true!”

But I just said it inside my head, so no one else heard it but me.

My parents kept staring at me, and it was starting to creep me out. Finally, after what seemed like forever, my mom smiled and said, “Honey, just remember, we love you! And if you need us, we’re right down the hall.”