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\par ~Look, I am way concerned about the environment. But that does not mean I want to wear my sister\rquote s old bras (p. 1).\par
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\par ~You see, I know what it is like to be in a strange place where you don\rquote t speak the language: it sucks. I learned this the hard way, thanks to Dad \endash who is in charge of the World Bank\rquote s North African division. He moved us all to Morocco for a year when I was eight. It would have been nice if somebody there had given me some drawings of Justin Timberlake for free, instead of staring at me like I was a freak just because I didn\rquote t know the Moroccan for \ldblquote May I please be excused?\rdblquote when I had to go to the bathroom (p. 10).\par
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\par ~The day I graduated from Speech and Hearing, I strode right up to Kris and called her a stupid, slobbering, inconsiderate simpering sycophant. We haven\rquote t really spoken much since (p. 11).\par
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\par ~I mean, for Lucy, the fact that they started selling Paul Mitchell products in our local drugstore was cause for jubilation the likes of which had not been seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall (p. 13).\par
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\par ~My mother sighed. She was always very popular in high school, like Lucy. She was, in fact, voted Miss School Spirit. My mom doesn\rquote t understand where she went wrong with me. I think she blames my dad. My dad didn\rquote t get voted anything in high school, because, like me, he spent most of his time while he was there fantasizing about being somewhere else (p. 15).\par
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\par ~I have worked very hard to acclimatize Theresa to our culture, since when she first started working for us she had just arrived here from Ecuador and didn\rquote t know squat about anything to do with America. Now she is so in touch with what\rquote s hot and what\rquote s not in the U.S. of A., MTV should hire her as a consultant (p. 21).\par
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\par ~And the whole wearing-black-every-day-because-I-am-mourning-for-my-generation thing hasn\rquote t exactly helped boost my popularity much, either (p. 25).\par
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\par ~I am telling you, Lucy\rquote s getting the one guy who will inspire Theresa to make fudge proves there is seriously no justice in the world (p. 33).\par
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\par ~Really, as children go, I am a major bargain. I don\rquote t even eat that much, either, seeing as how I hate almost all food except hamburgers, the Bread Lady\rquote s baguettes, and dessert (p. 43).\par
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\par ~So what does Catherine do now? She waves good-bye to her mom just like Marco and Javier, and then she, too, goes to Beltway Billiards \endash and works on her geometry homework in the glow of Delta Force (p. 45).\par
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\par ~As I stood there, I couldn\rquote t help feeling kind of sorry for myself. I mean, there I was, a fifteen-year-old, middle child reject, broke, standing in the rain after skipping her drawing class because she couldn\rquote t take criticism (p. 47).\par
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\par ~It was just like something out of a Bruce Willis movie, only without the soundtrack (p. 52).\par
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\par ~He obviously didn\rquote t know that no one calls me sweetheart, not even my mother. Not since Morocco, when she caught me trying to flush my dad\rquote s credit cards down the toilet (as revenge for making us move to a foreign country where I didn\rquote t speak the language) (p. 55).\par
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\par ~Oh, well. Things could have been worse. For instance, I could have a chicken bone where my nose should be (p. 57).\par
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\par ~On the words like it, Lucy jumped me. I would just like to point out that she had an unfair advantage over me because: a) she was two inches taller and about ten pounds, and b) she was not impaired by having one arm in a cast, and c) she did not have to worry about clutching a towel around her, and d) she has many, many years of reading Glamour magazine\rquote s Dos and Don\rquote ts section behind her, lending her style convictions superhuman strength (p. 70).\par
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\par ~And into the room walked David, the president\rquote s son. Who also happened to be David from my drawing class with Susan Boone. Save Ferris David. \ldblquote Nice boots\rdblquote David. And now I knew why he looked so familiar (p. 74).\par
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\par ~Well, how was I supposed to know he was the son of the president of the United States? (p. 75)\par
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\par ~I am so sure. Like there is an hour\rquote s worth of stuff to even say about me. My life so far has basically been just a long series of one humiliation after another. If they want to go in depth on my lisp and how I was cured of it by my irrational desire to call Kris Parks every bad S-word I could think of to her face, well, then, more power to them. But somehow I suspected they were looking for something a little more triumph-of-the-human-spirit-y (p. 85).\par
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\par ~So Joe the crow didn\rquote t live at the studio, but traveled to and from it with his owner. Some life for a big, ugly, hair-stealing bird (p. 88).\par
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\par ~Now, the only thing I want to know is, did you dye all you clothes black? Are you sure you don\rquote t have any holdouts? (p. 92)\par
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\par ~I suspect that Rebecca is secretly a robot and therefore immune to human emotion (p. 96).\par
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\par ~\ldblquote Oh, yeah?\rdblquote David said. \ldblquote Then how come you didn\rquote t come back to the studio after the Pineapple Incident?\rdblquote That was exactly how he said it, too. Like it was capitalized. The Pineapple Incident (p. 107).\par
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\par ~In history class they never tell you about cool stuff like first ladies running around saving paintings. Instead all you ever get to hear about are the stupid pilgrims and boring old Aaron Burr (p. 115).\par
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\par ~\ldblquote I think you looked chummy,\rdblquote Lucy said. \ldblquote Definitely chummy.\rdblquote \ldblquote There was nothing chummy about it,\rdblquote I said. \ldblquote We just ran into each other on the way out of the bathroom. That\rquote s all.\rdblquote Rebecca, seated in the front seat, remarked, \ldblquote I detected a frisson.\rdblquote Lucky and I both looked at her like she was crazy. \ldblquote A what?\rdblquote \ldblquote A frisson,\rdblquote Rebecca said. \ldblquote A tremor of intense attraction. I detected one between you and David last night\rdblquote (p. 120).\par
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\par ~\ldblquote Ah, I see that hint I planted about the frisson has germinated and produced a fragile, flowering bud\rdblquote (p. 159).\par
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\par ~\ldblquote You asked him? How many times have you heard me tell your sister, Miss Samantha, that if you chase boys, you are going to come to no good end? Look what happened to my cousin Rosa. I better not catch you calling him. You let him call you. And none of this instant messaging, either. It is best to be mysterious and aloof. If Rosa had been mysterious and aloof, she would not be where she is today\rdblquote (p. 160).\par
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\par ~I am supposedly the good one! In spite of everything I have done to try to convince them of the contrary \endash like dress entirely in black for a year, or my whole under-the-counter-celebrity-drawing-enterprise \endash they persist in thinking of me as the responsible one! And my saving the president from being assassinated and being named teen ambassador to the UN certainly didn\rquote t help things, let me tell you. I was seriously considering flunking German, just to get back at them. The way they\rquote d been acting lately, though, they\rquote d probably just be all, \ldblquote Sam got an F in German, isn\rquote t that the most adorable thing you ever heard?\rdblquote (p. 162)\par
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\par ~Then Rebecca wandered in, looked up at David and me, and went, \ldblquote Oh, yes. Definite frisson,\rdblquote before heading back upstairs to her room, most likely in order to attempt to contact the mother ship (p. 163).\par
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\par ~I am left-handed. Studies show that left-handed people die ten to fifteen years sooner than right-handers, due to the fact that the entire world, from automobiles to those desks you take the SATs at to cash machines at the bank, is slanted toward the right-handed. Finally, after awhile, we lefties just give up the struggle and croak rather than try one last time to write in a spiral-bound notebook with all those wires poking into our wrist (p. 217).\par
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