Uh-oh. I am way off the subject. Let me tell you some more about Mal, so you can see the ways in which we're alike and different. Okay. I've said that she has seven brothers and sisters. They're all younger than she is. And three of them are identical triplets. They are Byron, Jordan, and Adam, who are ten. Next comes nine-year-old Vanessa, then eight-year-old Nicky, then seven-year-old Margo, and finally five-year-old Claire. (The Pikes have a pet hamster, just like we do, only their hamster is named Frodo, after the character in Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.)
When Mal isn't watching her brothers and
sisters or reading or baby-sitting or doing her homework, she's writing and drawing. Mal would like to write books for children someday, and maybe illustrate the books, too. Mal feels insecure about her appearance. (I don't worry much about mine. 1 figure that as long as 1 have the body of a ballerina, I'm okay.) But Mal thinks her nose is too big, her hair is too red, and she has too many freckles. On top of all that, Mal wears braces (the clear kind, at least) and glasses. Her parents refuse to let her get contacts. However, they did let her get her^ears pierced — which prompted my parents to let me get mine pierced at the same time. Even so, Mal and 1 both think our parents treat us like infants (another reason eleven is such an awful age). They won't let us baby-sit at night unless we're sitting at our own houses. They won't let us dress as wildly as we'd like to. The Pikes won't even let Mal-lory get a nose job. ("Just wait till I make my first million," says Mal.)