What You Think Of And What You Do

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Aside from Nick's support, Mia's gotten seventeen emails, six phone calls and one visitor (Lilly) about the fashion thing.

Lilly's trying to claim that people aren't even paying attention to the paper, and that the supplement's being thrown away without anyone even looking at it.

But if that were true, why are so many people calling?

Because even if Lilly's trying to say that it's friends who still want to talk about Mia's suspension, Mia knows that it's definitely because they're trying to figure out why Mia sold out.

Because this has been her Brand for a while now – you know, environmentalism, and decrying the fashion and modelling industries for their sexism and racism and cultural vandalism of the feminine psyche because they've spent the last hundred years carefully reinforcing a worldview where all that matters for a woman is her looks, see, all the advertisements say so, and how those industries are part of the planet's problems with pollution and waste and inhumane labour and how refusing to partake might not solve everything, at least the dip in their sales shows the CEOs that some people do actually care!

And with ONE newspaper spread, Mia's reputation is just. Down the drain.

She's never going to let Grandmere hear the end of this.

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Okay, somehow pulling an all-nighter has gotten Mia NO CLOSER to understanding her Algebra work. Lilly's come over, because she wants to study for World Civics, so they're alternating: Lilly's quizzing Mia on Algebra, Mia quizzing Lilly on World Civ. This isn't the most balanced thing ever, because Lilly's totally making an A in Algebra, but Mia quizzing in World Civ. is helping her study too.

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Tina's over. Her younger brother and sisters were driving her crazy.

It's not like Mia could tell her she couldn't, okay? Besides, she brought bagels and vegetable cream cheese, AND was nice enough to not really mention the newspaper thing, except to say that Mia shouldn't care about other people's opinions on it, because Mia looks so hot.

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Michael told Boris where Lilly was, so now the group's four-people large, and studying is getting so much harder.

Why does Frank think right NOW is a good time to practise his drums?

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Mia mentioned to Lilly, who agreed, that Boris plus the drums meant that studying kind of stopped happening; so instead they all took a break and went to Chinatown for dim-sum.

Great Shanghai was honestly a great time, eating vegetarian dumplings and dried sautéed string beans with sauce. Mia ended up sitting next to Boris – and even though he honestly kind of irks her – he really made her laugh, engineering it so that whenever the wait staff brought something new to the table, the only place to put the food was right in front of them, so they'd have first dibs on it.

Boris really is a nice and funny person. Lilly's so lucky.

Of course, no good thing can last, even without it meaning to.

Some little Chinese-American girls came up to Mia and wanted to know if they could have her autograph, handing her pens and the advertising supplement that had appeared in the Times. She signed it, even though she kind of wanted to jam a chopstick into her left eyeball. Like, these sweet little girls wanted her autograph, and for what?

Not her tireless work trying to save the habitat for polar bears, not her humanitarian work helping whales and starving kids.

Because she'd been in a magazine in a bunch of dresses, and she's tall and skinny like a model. How's THAT an accomplishment?

After that, Mia got a massive headache and everyone decided to just go home, given the wasted time they'd spent eating. Does it count as a 'study break' if the break is longer than the time you'd spent studying?

Once Mia got home, things didn't really improve, but they also didn't continue to suck. Apparently, according to her mum, Sebastiano had called four times and also had a dress delivered for the Winter Dance.

It wasn't the kind of dress Mia would've grabbed for herself off a rack. Honestly it looked kind of boring – dark green velvet with no embellishments, with long sleeves and a wide square neckline.

But when she put it on . . . she - she honestly looked amazing. There was a note attached from Sebastiano, reading

Please forgive me.

I promise this dress will not make him think of you as his little sister's best friend.

S.

Which is very sweet. Sad, but sweet. Sebastiano can't know, of course, that the Michael situation is hopeless and no dress will make a lick of difference, no matter how nice Mia looks in it.

But hey. Sebastiano apologized, which is more Grandmere can claim. And none of this mess was really his fault – he'd met Mia like, five minutes before Grandmere gave him permission to do what he did. It's not like he knew that Mia would've hated any prospect of it. They were virtual strangers.

And it's also kind of Mia's fault too, when she thinks about it – she could've simply said 'No photos, please'. But she got so carried away, seeing herself in those beautiful dresses, that she forgot being a princess is about more than looking good: it's about setting an example to people – people you don't even know and may not ever meet.

Which is why if she doesn't pass the stupid Algebra test, she is so dead.

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Tuesday: Algebra and English finals: DONE.

Wednesday: World Civics: DONE.

Thursday: DONE.

THE FINALS ARE DONE!

And guess what? Mia's pretty sure she's passed all of them. Even Algebra; the grades aren't posted until Friday, but she bugged Frank about it for about five hours straight last night and he finally caved and said, "Mia, you did fine. Now leave me alone, all right?"

She did FINE. You know what FINE means, right?

SHE PASSED! WHOO!

Thank God that's all over. Now she can concentrate on the main important thing: her social life.

It's in a state of borderline disrepair – with the exception of Mia's friends, the whole school seems to have decided she's a big fat sellout.

Well, she's going to show them. Right after the World Civ. exam yesterday, it hit her like a ton of bricks. She knew exactly what to do. It's what Grandmere would do.

Okay, not exactly what Grandmere would do, but it's definitely in the spirit of Grandmere's brand, and it will solve the whole problem. Granted, it'll probably make a problem for Sebastiano, but he should have asked MIA what she wanted done with the pictures, not Grandmere.

Honestly, this is the most princessy thing Mia's done so far, and she's also doing it with minimal adult interference. She's pretty nervous.

But she's also not willing to sit back and take the abuse from her peers. And she's also doing this – functionally – by herself, if you don't count the help from the Plaza concierge in getting a room, Lars making all the calls on his phone, Lilly helping her write down what she was going to say and Tina doing her hair and makeup.

But other than those four people, it's been Mia's own actions making this happen.

Here we go.

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It's seven on a Thursday evening, and Mia's watched herself on all four major networks, plus New York 1, CNN, Headline News, MSNBC and Fox News Channel. Apparently, it's also going to be shown on Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and E! Entertainment News.

For a girl with self-image issues, Mia thinks she did a pretty good job. She didn't mess up, and if she spoke a little fast, well, you could still understand what she was saying. She looked good, too. She probably should've worn something other than her school uniform, but royal blue comes off pretty well on TV, and it was neat enough to look professional.

The phone's been ringing constantly since it first aired. The first person was Sebastiano, screaming about how Mia's ruined him – which she felt pretty bad about, it's not like she meant to, especially since he was so nice about making her a dress for the school dance.

But what was she supposed to do? She tried to make him see the bright side: "Sebastiano," she said, "I haven't ruined you. Really. It's just that the proceeds from the sales of the specific dresses I'm wearing in the ad will go to Amnesty International."

Sebastiano kept up the screaming a bit more, but Mia pointed about that it was actually a stroke of genius, that the donation of those specific thirty-some dresses' sales were a perfect idea: Mia's made it clear a lot that she's more politically concerned than fashion-concerned, and she knows that there's a decent amount of girls who look up to her for that, especially online. When Sebastiano launches his clothes, those girls won't hesitate to buy from him, because they'll see him as having the same values as Mia. The dresses will fly out of the stores.

She must have picked up a couple more things from Grandmere than she thought, because by the time Sebastiano hung up, he was completely on her side. He almost seemed to think it was his idea.

The next person on the phone was her dad. He was laughing his head off, wanting to know if it had been her mum's idea, and when Mia said no, that was all her, Philipe went "You have got the princess thing down, you know."

In a weird way, Mia feels like she passed that Final, too.

Except, of course, Mia's still not on speaking terms with Grandmere. Not a single phone call Mia's received (including one from her Thermopalis grandparents in Indiana) have been from her Renaldo grandmother. Really, though, Clarisse should be the one apologizing to Mia, because what she pulled was totally underhanded.

Almost as underhanded, her mum pointed out over sesame noodles during dinner, as what Mia did.

Which was sort of shocking to have pointed out to her. She'd never thought of it that way, but her press conference was about as sneaky as Grandmere ever was.

Almost it really should have surprised anyone – there might be a generation between them, but Mia is definitely a product of Clarisse Renaldo.

Of course, so were Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Mia's going to go watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine now. She hasn't been home early enough to watch it in weeks.

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Naturally for Mia, however, not all good things last.

Weirdly, though, this time it came from an unlikely source: Tina. She called, mostly to talk about the Secret Snowflake thing happening at school – Mia hadn't signed up for it, but Tina had, and her Snowflake had been leaving her flowers at her locker for a couple days now. She found it super sweet and romantic, even though her boyfriend Dave was definitely not the one doing it (he went to another school entirely, for pete's sake). No problem with this conversation topic.

And then she did bring up the bad topic: "Finals are over, so . . . when are you going to tell Michael that you're the one sending him those cards?"

Mia's eyes were dinner plates, even though Tina wasn't even in the room. "How about never?"

To which Tina replied rather tartly, "Mia, if you don't tell him, then what was the point of sending them?"

"To let him know that there are other girls out there who might like him, besides Judith Gershner."

Tina got severe. "Mia, that's not enough. You've got to tell him it was you. How are you ever going to get him if he doesn't know how you feel?" Tina Hankim Baba, surprisingly, has a lot in common with Philipe Renaldo. "It won't be like with Kenny, okay? You guys are meant for each other. I can feel it. You've got to tell him, and it's got to be tomorrow, because the next day you're leaving for Genovia."

How is Mia's memory so bad? She'd gotten so wrapped up in congratulating herself over the press conference that she'd forgot that she's due to spend eight hours in a jet with Grandmere. Who she isn't speaking to!

That'll be fun.

Mia told Tina she'd confess to Michael, just to get her to hang up happy, totally unaware that Mia was lying her ass off.

There is no way she's telling Michael how she feels about him. No. Not to his face.

She just can't.

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Okay, so why exactly does this school bother keeping all the students around another day? Just give them the Friday off – there's no classes, so everyone's just trapped in their homeroom until they pass out the final semester grades. Then everyone gets freed to go to the Winter Carnival.

Hey, here's an idea: Don't bother with the Carnival, email everyone their grades, and let Mia go home to pack for her trip, because tomorrow she's going to leave for a country she's barely been to that she's going to have to rule one day, with her lunatic grandmother who is currently not on speaking terms with her father, and who, from Mia's own personal experience, is not above smoking in the airplane bathroom, if the urge to do so strikes her.

Grandmere is a flight attendant's worst nightmare, is the point.

And that's not even the half of it – Mia's never actually been away from Manhattan for Christmas before, and her mum and Frank are acting like it's totally fine that Mia's leaving, because of course the three of them are having a little Christmas before she leaves, but that doesn't make it all okay.

And what about her Algebra grade? Sure, Frank says its fine, but what is fine, exactly? A D? A D is not fine. Not considering exactly how much of Mia's own personal and class time has been put into raising her stupid grade from an F, a D is simply not acceptable.

When she gets those stupid grades back, finally, she doesn't even bother looking at them, she just holds the stupid paper face-down and rushes out the room door the second the bell rings, Lars barely keeping up.

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Why is Michael at her locker?

Like, why?

Hers is nowhere near his, but she doesn't even get to open her mouth, because Michael's looking at her, all expectant, and he asks, "What's the verdict?"

What? And she repeats herself out loud.

"What did you get in Algebra?" Michael asked slowly, as if Mia was dense.

Which, of course, she is. So dense that she never realised how much in love with Michael she was until Judith Gershner came along and swept him right out from under her nose.

Anyway, Mia flips over the print-out of her grades – and would you believe that she's raised her Algebra F all the way to a B?

Which just goes to show that if you spend nearly every waking moment in your life studying something, the likelihood is that you're going to retain at least a little of it. Enough to get a B minus on a Final, anyway.

She doesn't want to gloat, but it's hard to be unhappy about this. There is absolutely no way she got that grade because the teacher is her stepfather. There's nothing subjective about Math the way there is in English. You're either right or you're not. And she was right. Eighty per cent of the time.

Mia didn't even tell Michael what the grade was before she threw her arms around his neck in a giant hug, making a victorious noise at a pitch she's pretty sure dogs can hear. It was pretty loud.

Of course, Michael was about as excited as she was, so that made it all pretty great.

And for all their school's administrators might be grasping, they definitely knew how to throw a party. Lilly was actually impressed.

All the school clubs were really trying to have a good time as well, besides the epic spread of food and drinks supplied by the school – ballroom dancing in the gym, courtesy of the Dance Club; fencing lessons in the auditorium, thank you Drama Club; ever the junior varsity cheerleaders were teaching their craft in the first-floor hallway.

Mia tripped over Lilly at the Students for Amnesty International booth (Students Against the Corporatisation of Albert Einstein High School didn't submit their application for a booth in time to get one, so Lilly was stuck at the Amnesty International booth), and guess who got an F in something?

"Lilly," Mia couldn't believe it! "Mrs Spears gave you an F in English? YOU got an F?"

She didn't seem too bothered by it, though. "I had to take a stand, Mia. And sometimes, when you believe in something, you have to make sacrifices."

"Sure," Mia said, "But an F? Your parents are going to kill you."

"No they won't. They'll just try to psychoanalyse me." Which is true. The Moscovitz's were definitely those kinds of parents.

Which was when Tina came over to drag Mia to the Computer Club's booth.

Quite possibly, the last thing Mia wanted to do that day. She already looked over at it, and she knows what's going on. Michael and Judith and the rest of the student computer experts were all sitting behind a bunch of monitors, and when someone came up, they'd sit down in front of one of the monitors and play a computer game the club designed where you'd walk through the school and all the teacher were in costume – Principal Gupta in a dominatrix outfit with a whip, Frank in footie pyjamas with a teddy bear. They used a different program when the club applied to be part of the carnival, of course, so none of the teachers or administrators knew what everyone is sitting there looking at.

You would think they'd wonder why all the kids were laughing so hard.

Whatever. Mia didn't want to go near it, but Tina was just making her anyway.

"Now's the perfect time to tell him," was her reasoning.

This is what happens when you tell your friends anything. There's a reason Mia only ever did that with Nick – he a continent away, and couldn't make her do anything.

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Okay, so it turns out that when you take a limo from her school before the hours of two-to-four in the afternoon, it's actually a pretty speedy drive from AEHS to her home.

Which is good, because Mia wanted to hyperventilate, and she wanted to do it in her own bedroom.

Look, she'd never planned on actually telling Michael about her feelings. Or that she was the one sending the letters.

But she also couldn't avoid the Computer Club's booth – for one, they had a good vantage view of the room, and if Mia had yanked herself completely away from Tina, they all would've seen, and a Scene would've happened. Plus, Michael had specifically asked Mia so many times to make sure she'd be stopping by. There was no avoiding it. She wasn't about to confess, though.

Tina was going to have to live with disappointment, okay? You don't get as stupid over someone like Mia has for Michael and then just go 'Oh, by the way, I'm in love with you'.

You just don't dothat.

Whatever.

Mia went up to the booth with Tina, and everyone there was all giggly and excited because the programs were actually doing so well, and there was actually a decent lineup, but Michael saw them and went, "Come on up!"

Like they were supposed to cut in front of a bunch of other people. Well, they did, of course, but everyone grumbled, and who could blame them? They'd been patiently waiting their turn.

But maybe because of Mia's night before – when she went on TV and explained that the only reason she'd done the clothing ad was because the designer was going to donate the proceeds to charity – she'd actually been a little more popular at school.

Anyway, Michael was all "Mia, sit at this one", and pulled out a chair in front of one specific monitor. So she sat and waited for the game to come on, listening to the other kids laughing, and she just found herself thinking, for some reason, Faint heart never won fair lady.

Which was a dumb as hell thought to have, because Michael was a brunette, for one. For another, he was definitely not a lady.

Somewhere in the middle of this, Mia heard Judith ask, "Wait, what are you doing?"

And Michael just said, "It's okay. I have a special one for her."

And then the screen in front of her flickered, and Mia just thought, okay. Here's the stupid teacher thing. Make sure to laugh so they think you like it.

She actually felt a little depressed at this point, despite the day's good points. Like, yeah, she was going to the dance after this, even though she had exactly no date, so it wasn't like she'd have anyone to dance with when her friends inevitably went off with their boyfriends; and everyone had been chatting around her about their holiday plans, going skiing in the mountains or to the Bahamas or whatever, and what's Mia's plan? Hanging out with a bunch of members of the Genovian Olive Growers Association. Sure, they were all probably nice people, but come on.

She's fourteen. She wants to hang out with people her own age.

And then tomorrow, she's going to spend just about all of it on a plane with her dad and his mother, who still aren't on speaking terms (and since she's also not speaking to Grandmere, that flight'll be fun), and when she gets back, knowing her luck, Michael and Judith will be engaged, probably.

That's what she was thinking as she sat there in front of that computer. That, and You know what? I'm not really in the mood to see any of my teachers in funny outfits.

Only when the flickering stopped, that's not what Mia saw. What she saw was this castle. Like, out of the tales of King Arthur, or Beauty and the Beast or something. And the picture zoomed in and flew over some castle walls and a courtyard with a big fat garden, all covered in blooming red roses. It was really well rendered, all details, and Mia just found herself sucked into that image.

A banner floated across the screen, in front of the roses, like it was blowing in the wind. It had some words written on it, and eventually it stopped flapping, and Mia could make out what was written in that gold leaf.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

You may not know it

But I love you too

Mia's head just. Snapped up, and she locked eyes with Michael. He was smiling. Why was he smiling? Was this a joke? Her feelings were a joke to him? How did he know about her feelings?

She didn't even say anything, but she could feel herself tearing up.

No. No, okay. She's not going to cry in front of him. She's not.

So instead of saying anything, she just bolted out of her chair, racing for the door. She barged past Tina, and through the middle of the Computer Club's line, and Lars had to race to follow, and she could hear Michael call, "Mia!"

But she kept going, hearing a couple footsteps try to keep up with her – more than Lars, so probably Tina and Wahim too – because that's just what she needs, an whole audience to this meltdown.

But only Lars seemed able to keep up with her – the track coach was always trying to convince Mia to join the team for the first month of classes, because Mia was pretty speedy when she put in the effort. Her stupid-long legs were handy that way.

She didn't even stop by her locker to grab her stuff. She could do it when she got back from winter vacation, okay? Or Frank could grab it before he came home. Whatever.

She just bolted out of the building, into the student parking lot. The car had been on standby basically the whole day – they were allowed to leave early if they wanted to, so Hans, the driver, had just packed a couple books for himself as he waited.

Mia didn't say anything at all, just threw herself into the backseat, making this loud, unhappy noise.

Hans was pretty startled when she did this – she always made sure to be pretty polite to him, because Hans always had a smile for her and he was a very patient driver even in the worst traffic. "Princess?"

Mia was straight up sobbing. Lars got into the shotgun seat. "The princess is distressed. I don't know why, but taking her home would be best."

Hans looked back at Mia. She just nodded, tears sliding down her face.

Hans started the car.

Mia didn't look back at her school. If she had, she would've seen Tina, Lilly and Michael all watch her leave.

But here she is.

In her room. Why can't she be left alone, please? She's got a lot of packing to do (no, she's Not thinking about how Grandmere will probably have an entire wardrobe decided for her in her room at the palace before she gets there, she doesn't want to think about Grandmere), and she wants some privacy.

But she's Mia Thermopalis, so of course she won't get what she wants. She gets constant calls, emails and uninvited people coming over.

Well, she doesn't want to speak to anyone. Not Lilly, or Tina, or Nick (who doesn't even know what's going on, but that doesn't matter, because she'll see him tomorrow or the day after or something. She can't sit down and explain this all to him right now. She doesn't want to), or her Dad, or her Mum, or Frank, or ESPECIALLY Michael, even though at last count he'd called four times.

And with her headphones on she can't even hear the other side of the door.

It's pretty peaceful.