It had been yet another disheartening day for Meghan, despite earlier expectations. Cruel jokes had certainly been played on her before - especially in her early years of high school. Boys would whistle and yell stuff along the lines of "Hey, Sexy!" or "Hey you! My friend wants yo number!".

But this time, she had actually been convinced for a short time that someone was really attracted to her.

Really, though, it wasn't Meghan's character to hang her head in sorrow. If it was all a joke, as Faye had said, then it was good that Clarissa had a crush on him - they'd make a good couple.

They'd be perfect.

Great.

Excellent.

And she would be all too happy for them.

Oh, so happy.

But now, Meghan found herself following Faye up some stairs, back up to her pink room. Faye was a few feet ahead of her, and entered first. Meghan heard a cry.

"Mercy sakes alive! What happened in here?!"

Meghan entered the room, and saw what Faye was screaming about.

"Wow."

The room was a disaster. Covers were pulled down and mattresses were moved. Papers were strewn all over the floor. Clothes spilled out of the closet. And every drawer in Faye's huge dresser was pulled out, with their contents thrown around inside.

"ANTHONY!!!" Faye screamed.

The door down the hall was thrown open, and Meghan heard loud rock music blasting out.

"What?!" A male voice shouted.

"GET IN HERE!!!"

Stomping.

"Yes?" He said, innocently.

"You did this."

"Did what?"

"I told you a hundred times, I did NOT take your demo tapes! So STOP RIFLING THROUGH MY THINGS!"

Anthony looked thoughtful for a minute.

"Well, Faye, if you didn't take them, why do they keep mysteriously disappearing? Especially since you're the one who despises my music."

"First of all, Anthony, everyone despises your music, not just me. If you even want to call it music, that is. And secondly, did you ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, your TWO-YEAR-OLD BROTHER might have gotten into them?"

"Oh, don't even try to pin this on Jacob. I can see right through your little sensibility nonsense."

As they argued, Meghan examined the room further. Her eyes rested on a brown mass in the corner, and they widened when she realized that it was actually her giant brown hobo bag.

Anthony went on.

"But that's quite alright, Faye, really." he said coolly.

The bag was opened, and upside down.

"Might I ask why that is?" Faye asked him.

Meghan saw her lip gloss, along with her mini brush, some three feet away.

"Oh, no reason." he answered with a bit of arrogance.

Not far from the lip gloss, Meghan saw her passport, and the stub of her plane ticket.

"Well, obviously it's something. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing there with your nose rubbing the ceiling."

Near that sat her wallet, with her useless New York driver's license and more money that still needed to be converted.

"No, really, it's nothing. Just that even though I still have yet to find my tapes, I did find something else quite interesting."

Meghan was not well. Not well at all.

"Anthony, if you took anything from my room, I promise you I will - "

Meghan pounced on the bag.

"You'll what? I don't even think you - er, what's gotten into your friend?"

Faye looked to see Meghan frantically digging in her purse, and then turned piercing eyes back on Anthony.

"And that's what REALLY fries me. You went through Meghan's things, even though you don't even know her. I suggest you give me back what's mine and get out."

Anthony stared at Meghan a bit longer, then shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't worry, Faye. When I get my tapes, you'll get your diary."

Meghan stopped.

"WHAT!!!" Faye hollered.

"And in the meantime," Anthony said with a smile, "I will be returning to an old pastime of mine - bedtime stories. Courtesy of Faye Winthrop."

He started to waltz back to his room, until Faye wrenched his arm.

"Give it back, you snake!!"

"Your anger will get you nowhere."

"ACK!!!!"

Faye ran down the hall and into Anthony's room, immediately proceeding to paw through whatever she got her hands on, looking for her diary. Anthony calmly followed her, though he didn't look all that worried about Faye being in his room, especially since the object she was looking for was hidden deep in his jacket pocket.

Meghan was left just sitting there in the corner with her bag, its contents spilled out all over the floor. She stared at the door for a minute, a bit muddled by the incident. Her initial worry was gone - however, she still hadn't found what she was looking for, and therefore wasn't completely relieved. She turned back to the bag to dig through it some more, and her worry grew bigger as she found nothing.

And then, she saw it. It had been underneath her bag. A white envelope, on the floor. Only one thing had spilled out of it - Daphne's school picture. Meghan picked up the envelope, and examined its contents. Nothing seemed to be missing. Meghan put the picture back inside, releasing her breath. She then let herself fall to the floor in a heap, among all the miscellaneous papers and a teddy bear here and there. She tucked the envelope into her jacket, and remained on the floor until Faye entered the room yet again.

"He thinks I didn't see my diary in his jacket pocket, but he doesn't know - I have a plan. Wait till he takes his shower tonight, Meghan, then I'll get it back. I'll - why are you lying on the floor?"

"Huh?" Meghan answered.

"Well...anyway, he won't see it coming. He thinks I'm dim as a doornail - I'll show him."

Meghan pushed herself up off the floor.

"What about his tapes?"

"Those tapes he made with his base guitar and a karaoke machine? Oh, I know where they are. They're in Jacob's room - he likes to pull the shiny ribbon out of them. I keep hinting that to Anthony, but do you think he'll listen? Oh no. He just wants to be belligerent. Thinks I have his tapes, but what would I want with them? I mean, I do hate that noise he makes with his guitar, but there's no use in stealing his tapes, I know he'll just make more..."

Meghan hadn't heard most of what Faye had said - she was just surprised anyone actually used cassette tapes anymore, since everything had gone to CDs. Soon enough, Meghan surmised, there'd be some other high tech newfangled way of playing music, and it would be thinner and smaller, too.

"I mean, if he really wants to play so badly, why doesn't he take some lessons so that he could do it right? Honestly, the way he does it now - it's just horrid. Horrid, I tell you..."

As Faye blathered on and on, Meghan thought about other things. In particular, where to put that envelope to assure that it would really be safe. In one of the drawers? No, those had been gone through too. Under the mattress? No, that could be moved.

"And he doesn't seem to understand Jacob's utter fascination with shiny things..."

Finally Meghan caught sight of her book bag. The one with the Jasperstone logo on it. The one that she took with her everyday. Maybe that would be a safe place.

She looked toward Faye, who was facing the other way but still talking endlessly. The blonde was completely oblivious as Meghan quickly pushed the envelope down to the bottom of her bag. Yes, this would be good. During the week, it would stay in this bag, and on weekends, when she went out, she'd transfer it to the brown one. But she would never leave the building without one of those bags. She'd always know where it was and that no one was looking at it. And if she happened to run into a certain member of her school's alumni one day in the process - well, that would be all the better.

It saddened her, though, to find out that leaving important papers here, at the Winthrop's house, where she thought she'd have privacy, had been naïve.

Why, I ask you, do I keep ending my days with disappointment?

You may remember me telling you before that I can usually tell a lot about a person's character just by seeing them once or twice, how they act, how they talk. So why did my judgment fail me now?

And Faye is just full of surprises. I thought she was the ditsy one, the one who wasn't very sensible. But it was SHE who told me that my social class was too low for me to be in contact with this...Lucas Brenshire. I thought it was just Luke. That's what he said. I mean, he said his last name. But he said it like it was no big deal. And it isn't. Everyone has a last name.

I suppose I should have recognized it, though, as being the last name that was printed on the wall of that school down the road. My mind lapses sometimes, I don't know. But even so, why does it matter? The whole thing is ridiculous. Dividing people up because of their last names. Students, citizens, friends - and even family.

Maybe I didn't make it clear before how much this ticks me off. I've blamed plenty of other things as being the cause of Aunt Libby's problems, but this, my friends, is the true culprit - the social class system. People thinking they're better than everyone else because of the name they were born with. It's like no matter what happens, these people are on a quest to deny the ultimately indisputable fact that we are all PEOPLE, whether our last names are Brenshire, or Winthrop, or Payne, or Dashwood, or Windsor, or...Reynolds.

But whatever. I'm just a Yankee commoner. What do I know?

Okay, tell me - did I have you going for a minute? Or even just a second? Yeah, probably not.

In case you guys didn't know, I stuck Windsor in there because that's the actual "last name" of the royal family in England. I learned that when the princes were on Dateline. A little-known fact: they like to watch American Idol.

Anyhow, again I must say goodbye. Keep reviewing, I love it!

-rf-