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     In regards to your request for the reasons I chose Vice Foreign Minister Relena Darlian for my project on an admirable person in recent history, Ms. Lee, Anne and Mr. Chang and everyone have informed me that I need to try to fit in to my new school. Half of the class is doing Relena-nee, so therefore I am doing her too.

     However, even if the whole class were doing her, I wouldn't have selected her if I didn't admire her. I do. She took over the world for herself right out under the noses of the people who had had her take over the world for them. She doesn't hate anyone, even people who did something awful like kill her beloved father, not any more. I can't do that. I still hate Dekim, even though Ivan shot him very dead. I even went out to his grave and yelled at him ("I HATE YOU! YOU STINK!") the way Relena-nee suggested, and I still hate him, but I did feel better and the hate's only there when I prod it, like a loose tooth. Relena is a very strong person and has a nice sense of humor. She can laugh at herself, but she doesn't laugh at other people that much, even though she went to this kind of school and had her classmates tell her that people like Linda and niichan and Miss Schbeiker were NOKD and probably had weird diseases or something. She doesn't let Cousin Dorothy get on her nerves, much, even when my cousin tries to. She didn't even get mad at me when I had her kidnapped, but tried to talk me out of everything in a sane and sensible matter.

     And that is why I am doing my report on an admirable person in recent history on Vice Minister Darlian.

     This is about how I picked the person for the admirable person in RECENT history report.

     When I started going to Hawkins, I was nervous. Mama and Papa had just divorced, and Papa and I moved down to the house that was Nana Jo's before she died, but Papa was so worried about where I would go to school that he had me take all sorts of tests because everyone knows how bad the public schools in Orange County have been for years and years and centuries. And because I did well enough, I got a scholarship to go to Hawkins, which is normally not the sort of school where people like me go. It is not as if we were poor people, but we are not rich, either.

     Even on the first day, when it seemed that a lot of people were new, they were new because of part of the government moving here from San Francisco and having their parents just have moved. And they had already been here for a week or two and started fitting in and everything. I tried saying hello to some girls, but they looked at each other and one said "NOKD," and the other said "Definitely," and walked off.

     I didn't even know what "knock-dee" meant yet, but I felt bad.

     And then we had the part where we were supposed to split into groups and tell everyone about the scariest thing that had ever happened to us.

     I told about the time Mama and Papa were arguing and Mama bit Papa, and then she looked at it for a bit and started crying, and then he came over and held her and started crying himself, and the next day they announced that they were getting a divorce, and Papa did not even need to have any stitches.

     Everyone sort of looked at me in a NOKD way, and I felt like curling up into a little ball and melting into the corner, so I glared at all of them and hoped somebody would hit them in the mouth very hard and knock out their teeth.

     Then a voice announced that she was going next, and really she hadn't been part of the "everyone" in the last paragraph, but at the time it had felt like everyone, even though it really wasn't. It was the girl in the wheelchair, and I had been trying not to look at her all day, because it's rude to stare at somebody just because they're in a wheelchair even if it is fancy looking and has a motor so it goes when you press a button and a built-in fold-up desk so she didn't have to try and use a school desk, and her backpack hanging off of it, and everything. But you know how it is when you're trying not to stare, so I kept checking back to make sure that I wasn't staring, and hoping that there were lots of people around all the time, because I didn't know what to say to a person in a wheelchair, and feeling like a total dorp.

     Her name was Marimeia, and the scariest thing that had ever happened to her was when she said she wouldn't help her grandfather with any further illegal activities and her grandfather shot her.

     (Marimeia is reading this over my shoulder, and she wants to point out that she doesn't call him her grandfather because anyone who would shoot holes in his own daughter's kid doesn't deserve to be anyone's grandfather and besides if I had him attached to my family I'd want to divorce him from it too. Also that taking over the world is often a bad thing but she doesn't think there are any laws against it. But I say that if there isn't a law about it there should be, and besides from the way she tells it he had been about to shoot Relena Darlian and kill her, and I *know* that's illegal. Marimeia says I have a point.)

     It was kind of interesting being shot, because for a while it really, really hurt, and then it didn't hurt but everything felt weird, like being at the aquarium in the part where the little bit of glass for people to stand in goes right out into the big tank, so it feels like you're the one in a terrarium for the sea animals to look at you. Everyone was moving sort of slow, and she heard all the talking around her very clearly but it didn't really make sense until later when she thought about it, so it was sort of like she was floating in a dream all until the ambulance finally came and they loaded her in and put some sort of mask over her nose and mouth. Then she actually passed out. I've never passed out, although sometimes I've fallen asleep almost as soon as I got into bed.

     When she was done, everyone looked at the table sort of the way I had been not looking at Marimeia's wheelchair. I felt bad for her, so I said I hoped she wasn't living with her grandfather now, and she said no, she was living with Anne, and besides her grandfather was dead. Anne is something in the government, so she and Marimeia had moved to the LA area a few weeks before I had. At first I thought Anne was some sort of social worker, but Marimeia explained that her father would have married Anne only they never quite got around to it before he died. Besides, the military had some sort of stupid rule about married people not being able to work together in it -- the two of them were both in the military -- and they liked working together and were very good at it, so they decided that that was more important than officially going out or getting married right then.

     But that was later. At the time, we finished going round the circle, and then at lunch I sat with her and told her that I was glad she'd taken her turn when she had and that I felt embarrassed because I didn't know what to say to a person in a wheelchair. Marimeia asked me what I'd say if she wasn't in a wheelchair, and I said "Hello, I'm Linda Gutierrez. Do you like the books by L. Frank Baum?"

     And she said "Yes, I think The Sea Fairies is my favorite, or maybe Glinda of Oz. Do you like Eleanor Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet?"

     And I said I'd never read it, so she said that I could come over and read it some time (it is very old speculative fiction, written before they knew much about any of the solar system besides Earth), and we were friends.

     She told me that she was mad at the school because they wouldn't let her use her father's last name, because he hadn't been married to her mother. I asked if he had said that she could use it, and that was when she explained that he had died a while back and hadn't known she existed because her mother and her mother's family (which included her nasty excuse for a grandfather) didn't tell him. I said I was sorry that her father was dead, and she gave me a funny look because she wasn't used to people not knowing who her father was. I knew his name sounded sort of familiar, but he had died when I was six and about the only thing outside of the neighborhood that I noticed when I was six was that we had a war and then it ended, and Mama came straight home from work and said "The war is over. Thank God." and hugged us, and the whole neighborhood had a party and nobody remembered to tell us to go to bed until after I fell asleep in the people next door's playhouse. Hawkins wanted her to use her mother's last name, but Marimeia explained that the only decent whatever-it-was-her-mother's-family-name-was was this boy who is practically grown up, maybe eighteen, who was calling himself by the name because her mother's brother was dead and didn't want it (Like the swan who used to be Pooh before Edward Bear was. Her uncle, not this decent guy.) and she was absolutely not going to be one, not if they gave her Fs for a year. But luckily a Relena whom they knew had been reading some books while Anne had made her -- Relena -- take a vacation and had an idea, so Marimeia was registed as Marimeia FitzCount, which is how you are supposed to talk about a Count's bastard, which is a word like "hell" and is only rude when you're using it to be rude. I told her about the discussion when Mama and Papa divorced about who was going to be what name, so that Papa and I are Gutierrez, and Mama went back to being Donnell, and Rosa and Maria who stayed with Mama are Donnell-Gutierrez. Marimeia wanted to know what it was like to have little sisters, and I told her about mine through the rest of lunch, right through until recess. I had to finish my pudding in a terrible hurry because I had spent too much time talking.

     And at recess Marimeia explained about the way that many of the families in the school had a bunch of money or came from the sort of families that think they're more important than everyone else, and have been at Hawkins for several generations. And they think that people who aren't their sort of "we are the best" people are NOKD, which stands for "not our kind, dear."

     I pointed out that it sounded like her father had been famous and her grandfather had been sort of famous, so wouldn't she be their kind? She got annoyed and said that she didn't WANT to be their kind, even if they paid her. Come to think of it, I wouldn't want to be their kind, either. Not even if you paid me as much money as Marimeia's wheelchair cost. Not even if you paid me more. Marimeia is actually a little younger than I am -- they skipped her up a grade -- but she acts like she is several years older. I think it's an only child thing.

     Papa was glad I had made a friend. He thought she looked kind of familiar, but then he said it was nice of me to stand by her and take care of her and he forgot about having seen her picture before while I explained that I wasn't pitying her or anything else like that because Marimeia is such a cool person and likes the same sort of books and shows as I do and has a wicked sense of humor and anyone would be glad to talk to her and help out when she needs it because she would help out when I needed it. Marimeia isn't in a wheelchair because she can't walk. She can walk, but because of getting shot and the surgery to get the bullet out and some complications of having to lie on her back for a long time, she just isn't strong enough to walk around. So I helped her practice swinging on the rings, and stood sort of nearby, not near enough for her to accidentally kick me, but near enough to catch her when she had to let go and be leaned on back to her wheelchair, and she can go right to the end of the row now and can nearly come back. I can do them, of course, but Marimeia is from the colonies and didn't have rings there, so she had to learn how you're supposed to do them before she could try to really do them, even without being weak. And when she can do the rings, we're going to practice skipping one each, and then doing the hand-over-hand bars. Some of the fifth-grade girls can do the hand-over-hand bars skipping two, all the way across and back. I have problems skipping one just now, but Marimeia and I are going to be able to do what they can when we are in fifth grade. We resolved.

     Besides, I think part of why Papa looked at her so funny the first time she came over to play was because she came in a car with government plates driven by an actual bodyguard. His name was Eevon and he was very nice and explained that he was only here because this was the first time. (Marimeia says that his name is really spelled I-V-A-N. I left it like that the first time because I always thought that that name was pronounced "eye van" and maybe you did too, Ms. Lee.) Actually I started out by calling him Mr. Patrilov, but he asked us to call him Ivan. He made shadow puppets on the wall and showed me how to fall down without breaking my whatchamacallit, in case I should slip suddenly or somebody hit me. He was just as glad that she had made a friend as Papa was that I had made one. Ivan used to work for Marimeia's sorry excuse for a grandfather, but when he shot Marimeia, Ivan turned around and shot him. He feels that he betrayed her by not keeping her from getting shot or not stopping her from trying to take over the world or something, so he tries to be her bodyguard whenever she needs one, although the rest of the time he guards other people for the government or does other things that I probably wouldn't be interested in. Marimeia says that her niichan -- niichan is a Japanese word meaning "big brother," but you can use it for somebody who isn't really your big brother, but who feels like your big brother, so he's sort of your informally adopted big brother, and you say it "knee-chawn" -- thinks that Ivan's full name is very funny, and calls him Vorpatril, after an Ivan in a book. I asked what "vor" meant, and Marimeia said she'd asked that, and her niichan said that it meant you got to follow strange customs that weren't always very useful any more, cut out pieces of yourself if your honor asked for it, and work until you dropped if the world needed you to. So actually it's a lot like most of the people Marimeia knows. Her niichan said that that was probably true, but that "Vormaxwell" just sounds silly. It does.

     The first time I came over to play, Marimeia showed me a picture of her father. He looked very cool. He looked like the sort of person who made the nobility be worth something when it was worth something. I said so, and Marimeia liked it, and when Anne came home she said that Marimeia's father would have thought that that was the best compliment anyone could ever give him. Anne works long hours, so Marimeia has a nanny who picks her up from school and looks after her in the afternoons. Her name is Shani, and she has a collection of Really Weird Barrettes, and wears bright blue lipstick, which looks kind of strange on her dark skin. Both Shani and Anne were very happy that Marimeia and I were friends, because Marimeia had never had friends near her own age before. The closest was Erzebet, whose father works for the government and who came to Hawkins when Marimeia did from the same school, and is the only other one who did in our grade, but you might not know about her because she is in Mr. Berkowitz's class, and anyway the most they did was say "hi" to each other now and then. Erzebet is very shy and gets picked on a lot when there are no teachers around. We will have to do something about Erzebet.

     Marimeia also showed me a picture of Mr. Chang, the one she is always talking about, with her niichan and three other guys their age, including the one who took her uncle's name over. They are all about the same age, which is seventeen, although her niichan and the not-uncle and this guy who was glaring sort of the way I do when I want people to let us put the wheelchair next to the rings only scarier don't really know how old they are, so they kind of guessed. Mr. Chang looks very Chinese and has hair maybe about as long as mine or a little shorter pulled back in a ponytail. Marimeia's niichan offered to braid it like his is once, and Mr. Chang got annoyed and explained that a couple of hundred years ago China got conquered by some people called Manchu who made all the Chinese men wear their hair that way, so that once they got unconquered and conquered Manchu themselves they said they were never ever going to wear their hair that way again, and Marimeia's niichan apologized and thanked him because he never had known what a queue was. I thought it was a ponytail, myself, when I read it in a book, or maybe something you pinned to your hair. (Marimeia told me all this. I hadn't known how you said it, either.) Her niichan looks like Lara Croft, only a guy, so he doesn't stick out in front as much. She e.mailed him that I had said that, and told me that he had said, "Well, at least not up there." We were riding to school in the car with Ivan again, and he got annoyed. Marimeia explained that her niichan had said that you had to have a dirty mind to get the joke, so if you got offended, it was the fault of your own dirty mind. I didn't get it, so Marimeia explained. Ivan blushed awfully red. Grown-up women don't really start growing snot from their private parts, do they? YUCK.

     Marimeia says that I am her best friend. Her niichan doesn't count, because of being a niichan. She said that I was her best friend because she's my friend because of who she is, not what she is. I didn't understand.

     Most of the people who get to know Marimeia get to know her because of who her father was, or what she did because her yucky miserable excuse for a grandfather told her to. Most of them are interested in her because of that. Mr. Chang and Ivan got to know her that way. Mr. Chang -- um, Marimeia says it's a secret, but he did something that he thought was the right thing to do involving her father but he still feels bad about it. Anne says that you should feel bad about hard choices or they weren't really hard in the first place, and if you never have any hard choices in your entire life you're probably not worth knowing, unless you're too young and sheltered to have had any YET. Anne and Mama ought to meet. So Mr. Chang went to work for her to make up for it. Ivan used to follow her father. I'm not sure if that means he worked for her father or voted for him or what. Marimeia thinks it was somewhere in between, but she doesn't know for sure, because she never thought about it. Anyway, he joined up with her and her grandfather because he thought it was what her father would have wanted, only Anne came and told them it wasn't, and she ought to know. That was when Marimeia told her grandfather she quit, right after Anne told them that. (Marimeia calls her Anne, and Ivan calls her Lady Anne, and the mailbox just says Anne. I don't know if Anne has a last name.) And Anne only came and told them that and took Marimeia home with her because she had been Marimeia's father's going-to-be-solemnized-one-day-wife.

     We were in the living room when Marimeia told me that, and Anne came in from the bedroom and said "When I came to rescue you, it was because you were your father's child. When I brought you to live with me, it was because you were your father's daughter. When I drove over half of San Francisco searching the used bookstores for the rest of the sequels to the mushroom planet book, it was because you were Marimeia." Then Marimeia had Anne come over and gave her a hug.

     Even Relena only got to know Marimeia because of the taking over the world thing, although I wasn't quite sure how they were involved at the time, since Marimeia didn't bother to mention the rest of Relena's name, just that Relena was trying to talk her out of it, and of course Relena was there when she got shot. Marimeia's niichan was the first one who came over and got to know her just because she was Marimeia. (Although half the time he calls her things like Mari-chan, and M'aider, and Molly May.) Marimeia said I was the second. I think everyone in San Francisco must have the brainpower of a gnat.

     Then I told her how annoyed I was about the project. Remember, Ms. Lee, you said that it was to be a project about someone we admired from history, so of course I was going to do Pharaoh Hatshepsut. I told about being cheesed when you said she was too early, and being even more cheesed when you said Eleanor of Aquitaine was still too early. Marimeia offered to help me think of someone, and eventually we decided we could both do one on Harry S Truman. I hadn't really heard more of him than the name before, but from everything Marimeia said he sounded cool.

     I still don't see that he counts as being too early. He even let off an atom bomb!

     Anyway, then we talked to people in our class to see what they were doing. The boys were doing all sorts of different people. Three of them were doing Milliard Peacecraft, because he nearly blew up the Earth, which is very interesting to boys. Papa says that if a shipload of little girls were wrecked on a desert island, they would draw up a chart and take half a day to decide who should have what task when. If a shipload of little boys were wrecked on a desert island, they would run around pretending that the sticks were guns and pretending to shoot each other. Also that no matter how many sticks there were, all the boys would argue over just one of them. Half of the girls were going to do Relena Peacecraft, so Marimeia said "Anne and the others have said I should try to fit in more. I guess I'll do mine on Relena Darlian too."

     "Relena Peacecraft," said Lisa. (I bet you noticed that Lisa is the snobbiest girl in the class. She wants everyone to listen to her. I heard that Lisa's big brother in the high school part threw a party for all the "best people" in the high school and they all just got drunk. I don't think they can be as superduper as all that if they can't think of anything more interesting to do at a party.)

     "Yes, but she went back to being Darlian after the war," Marimeia said, "and she got made Vice Foreign Minister as Relena Darlian. She belonged to them for a lot longer than she belonged to the Peacecrafts, after all."

     "Oh, and I suppose she told you all this when you had her over for tea and cakes," Lisa sneered.

     "Actually, she asked why we'd had her kidnapped and tried to tell me that taking over the world was a Really Dumb Idea, only more politely." Marimeia folded her arms and looked superior.

     Lisa stalked off to the pencil sharpener.

     "Did you really kidnap Relena Peace -- um -- Darlian?" I asked.

     "Not personally, but yes."

     "How come you never told me?"

     Marimeia shrugged. "You didn't ask."

     "Have you ever kidnapped anyone else?"

     "Not that I can think of, no."

     Then she found out that I'd never seen City Hunter, so I came over and she showed me a whole bunch of it. It's a really great show! How come all the really old shows are better than the new ones? People even write stories about it. Marimeia showed me the one she wrote. Unfortunately she put a bunch of people she knew in it, so the only people I knew were Anne and Marimeia and Ryou and Kaori, but it was still very funny, even if she had to explain some of the jokes to me.

     This was last week, and that was the day Papa found out that he would have to go away for the weekend. So he called and asked Anne if I could spend it at Marimeia's apartment, and Anne said "sure."

     Papa feels better about Anne now that he found out that she goes to our church. She works a lot, so she can't come that often, sometimes not even on Sundays, but she comes when she can because it makes her feel better. The first time I saw her there, I asked where Marimeia was.

     Anne explained that she had given Marimeia a choice of going to her sort of church or the one her father went to, and Marimeia decided to go to a branch of her father's. It is a strange sort of church that is Christian but not Catholic, like us, or Protestant, and I hadn't heard of it, but it is the sort Ivan goes to, so he takes Marimeia.

     I asked how it was different, so Anne explained. They have services sort of differently, and when they cross themselves they start the cross stroke from the other side, and they think the Holy Spirit only comes from the Father except from the Father and Son, and they think the Pope is just the bishop of Rome and shouldn't have any more respect or sayso than any other bishop of a big famous ancient city.

     I said I bet they had a fight over that last one sometime, and it seems they even had a war or two about it way back when. Not recently, of course, because having a war about somebody's religion is silly unless they believe that God tells them to go kill babies or something.

     But anyway, I was really looking forward to having a sleepover at Marimeia's. I promised to bring munchies, and we were going to watch a whole bunch of City Hunter and a movie about King Arthur and the Holy Grail that she said was really really funny.

     On Thursday, something came up, and Anne was going to have to go out of town for the weekend. Marimeia says this happens a lot with her job. Usually Shani just stays over for the weekend herself. Papa looked a little worried, but I said that Anne wouldn't keep Shani around if she thought she wouldn't do a good job of looking after somebody, and he cheered up.

     On Friday, Shani didn't come to pick us up. I was getting a little worried, and Marimeia and I started eating the cheese filled pretzel tubes, when Ivan drove up and explained that Shani had broken her leg and wouldn't be able to come, and that Anne had left around lunchtime. We got in the car and Marimeia said not to worry, and picked up the car phone, which didn't even have a vidscreen, and dialed in a long number, and then said into it "Ni hao, Mr. Chang."

     She explained the whole situation to him, and then was silent for a while, and said "Uh huh" a bunch of times, and "yes," and "certainly." Finally she said "Thank you so much. We'll see you there," and hung up.

     At the apartment, Marimeia and Ivan and I had just finished the cheese pretzel thingies when two Chinese people came in. One of them was Mr. Chang, but he's much much more Chinese-ish in person than he was in the picture. I don't know how to explain it. The other one was a lady who was blonde -- I didn't know Chinese people came in blonde -- who was taller and looked very dependable. Marimeia said that the blonde was Commander Sally, that Mr. Chang was Mr. Chang, that I was me, and we all said good-bye to Ivan.

     Commander Sally and Mr. Chang had stopped off and gotten Chinese takeout that they approved of on the way there, so we had Chinese for dinner, only it didn't taste that much like the Chinese food from the place near where Papa lives. And all four of us watched the movie together -- Commander Sally took my dinner away from me halfway through it so I wouldn't choke to death laughing -- and then she gave my dinner back and we watched more City Hunter. I decided that City Hunter was my second favorite show ever, right next to this really old show that they used to rerun in Seattle called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Commander Sally didn't know what we were talking about at all, but Marimeia got really excited because they rerun it in the colonies too. Marimeia is from the colonies. This is why she has second and third helpings at lunch, and the other students shouldn't yell at her for coming back, because she practically never has to throw food away. Anyway, we both agreed that it was a really good show, and Mr. Chang said that his wife had said that when she was a little girl Lady Elaine Fairchild was the only interesting female character on colony television. I said that I didn't know Mr. Chang was married, and Marimeia elbowed me and said that Mrs. Chang was dead. Mr. Chang said that she died three years ago in a short busy voice, and I said that he couldn't have been married three years ago because he would have been fourteen and fourteen is too young to get married, and he said he could, so, because their parents made them do it. Some people in the colonies do things very differently.

     We went to bed sort of late. That is, Commander Sally went to Anne's bed, and Marimeia and I went to her bed which had been taken apart so I had the mattress on the floor and she had the box springs, and Mr. Chang went to the couch. Then the next day, they weren't quite sure what to do with us (I don't think taking care of third-graders is in their job description), so they took us to Disneyland.

     I just moved here, and so did Marimeia, and so did Mr. Chang, and so did Commander Sally, so we all still think Disneyland is pretty neat. Marimeia likes Knott's Berry Farm better, but still. Anyway, the two government people thought they might see some of their coworkers there that day, because Relena Darlian was going to make a speech. Mr. Chang was annoyed because he couldn't see why Relena Darlian would make a speech at Disneyland, but I pointed out that it was supposed to be the happiest place on Earth, so why wouldn't she? Mr. Chang said that it was hard to argue with such womanish logic, and Commander Sally started having a Loud Discussion with him that actually was a discussion and not an argument like Papa and Mama's "discussions" used to be and lasted all through the teacup line and right through the teacups. Our teacup went the fastest and Marimeia and I barely even got to touch the wheel. One of the kids in the family getting out ahead of us threw up, and Marimeia was very surprised because most people in the colonies don't get motion sick because their ancestors didn't get motion sick because the people who did get motion sick a lot never went to the colonies or moved back to Earth in a hurry.

     We all brought stuff to read in the lines, of course -- although Commander Sally brought magazines so she could throw them out when she was done and have her bag get lighter as the day went on. Commander Sally is very cool, even cooler than Mr. Chang, although not to Marimeia, which is why Marimeia cheered for him and I cheered for Commander Sally when they did the practice shooting thing against each other, but that was in the afternoon and I'm not there yet. Marimeia had brought a book Commander Sally had given her, and I asked if it was a birthday present. But it wasn't. Commander Sally is a doctor (I don't know why they don't call her Dr. Sally) so Marimeia had asked her if the snot thing was true. Commander Sally said yes, sort of, only not green, and where had Marimeia heard such a thing? Marimeia said that she'd read it in one of the magazines in Anne's office that she'd read because she was really bored, and Commander Sally went right out and bought Marimeia all the Green Knowe books in a box set. I think this is a really neat way to get books for a present, and I wonder if it would work if I tried it with Papa?

     Then at half past noon we went up to the amphitheater, which is tucked away in a corner of the park that it really doesn't go with very well but at least they had space, to hear Relena Darlian's speech.

     There's really nothing wrong with her, it's just that Lisa and the others are all going to do her too and they can probably afford to have video presentations and build the display out of real wood and everything. Papa is very impressed by her and has a picture of her in the upstairs hall. I asked him why, once, and he said it was because of what she represented, like Joan of Arc or Camelot or a virgin saint the Romans were going to martyr. I asked if she had been martyred (that was last year, when I was seven), and he said of course not but that everyone had been half-expecting it because they didn't think that she could survive, but they all wanted to believe she could. He said she made us see ourselves better than we are. Papa said that also a big part of what made people still interested was the way that after the war was over she had pretty much disappeared, like somebody named Cincinnati. Which seems an odd name to give someone, but you never know. Of course, Papa was talking about her as Relena Peacecraft, so maybe he didn't know she was the same person.

     I mentioned that to Marimeia and the others, and Commander Sally said that the one who really had disappeared was somebody called Hero, probably because of having been a hero, and Mr. Chang said that he'd probably gone to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Commander Sally suggested school, and I asked why anyone all grown up like that would want to go to school, and she said she was quoting a book called Endersgame that I would probably like when I am a little older. Marimeia said that this Hero person would probably just show up on their doorstep or one of their friends' or maybe even Relena's with no explanation of where he'd been or what he'd been doing, and act as if he'd always been there. I said that would be rude and didn't he have any manners, and they all laughed -- not in a mean way, though -- and said that he was still getting this human thing worked out, so no, not unless he was really concentrating on acting like everyone else. Marimeia knows the most interesting people.}

     Then Relena Darlian started speaking, so we all shut up.

     I was afraid it was going to be long and boring, but it wasn't. She talked about how the colonies oughtn't to be treated like little kids and sent out of the room when the grown-ups talk about serious stuff, and about how people were pretty much the same everywhere -- some of them are nasty like Lisa, and some of them are nice like Maria and Rosa and Shani, and now and then you get somebody really darn cool like Marimeia. Some people you're going to get along with better than others, but you can't go around saying people are NOKD because we're all one kind when it comes right down to it, and if you say people come in several kinds then you're opening a door so people can say that one kind is somehow better than the rest, like the little boys arguing over the one single driftwood stick on an island full of them. She said that now that all the fighting was over, it was more important than ever to talk to people. For one thing, it's easier to be scared of someone if you've never talked to them. Some people at school are scared of Ivan, can you believe it? For another thing, if you don't talk to someone just because they're from somewhere else or because they act funny or look funny, you might be missing out on a lot, but you can't know until you talk with them. I kept thinking about Marimeia, and we ended up looking at each other and smiling a lot. (I think Commander Sally and Mr. Chang were just as happy that Marimeia had made friends with me as Ivan and Anne were.) Then she finished up by explaining that the future depended on all of us. If everyone thinks that somebody else is going to take care of the future turning out happy, it will end up like the time Relena Darlian went on vacation with her friends and everyone thought someone else was going to wash the dishes and they ended up going out and buying new ones, except that it's kind of hard to go out and buy a new future. But if enough people work at it all over, on Earth and the colonies and Mars and everywhere, we might just get the future we deserve.

     It was a WONDERFUL speech and everyone except Marimeia and a few other people in wheelchairs stood up and clapped. Then Marimeia turned to me and said "Neh, do you want to meet her?"

     Of course I did, so we went round to the back. The Disneyland security people looked at us kind of funny, but then Marimeia waved at one of the government security people and called "Hey, Demitri!" (Marimeia doesn't think there's an e in his name, but she's not sure.)

     She explained to us that he was Ivan's little brother and to him that we had come to see Relena, and Commander Sally and Mr. Chang waved idcards at the Disneyland people. Demitri went in to see if Relena could see us, and I started feeling a little nervous. After all, she used to be the queen of the entire world, and here I was with my messy ponytails in an old T shirt and the shorts with a spot on the right leg.

     But then Demitri told us to come in, and she was sitting on a box drinking from a water bottle. She stood up to say hi, and Marimeia said "This is my best friend, Linda Gutierrez, and she just moved here from Seattle," and I felt very proud all of a sudden.

     And then Relena Darlian smiled the way that the girl who used to babysit the three of us did and said "I'm glad you and Marimeia have made friends so quickly. That was always the worst part of moving in the school year, coming in when everyone else was friends with each other," and then she looked at my T shirt and asked if it came in a larger size.

     It was just the one from soccer that says "Pretty in pink, WICKED in uniform," but I explained that I thought it did but I wasn't sure, and she said "I'll have to see if I can get one for Dorothy."

     See, she and Marimeia's cousin Dorothy give each other funny T shirts whenever they happen to see one, and I said that that was like the way Mama and Aunt Claire give each other silly buttons every so often, and then I told her about Mama and Papa, and meeting Marimeia, and lots and lots about how neat Marimeia is and how we are making up our own secret language and everything. Relena is a very good listener. And I told about the Weekend Mixup and how I hoped Papa wouldn't think we'd been irresponsible or anything --

     "Don't worry. I drove," said Mr. Chang.

     Commander Sally whapped him with her empty popcorn bag. I guess she's a scary driver.

     -- and coming around and the government people letting us in, and I finished with "And all these government security people recognize her. Wow, her father really *must* have been famous."

     Everyone kind of looked at me -- still not counting Marimeia -- so I quickly explained, "Well, he died when I was six, and I really don't care much about that bit of history. I like ancient Egypt, and the Vikings. They traded all the way to Constantinople and everything." Then I thought maybe I'd been a bit rude, so I quickly said "Although I'm sure it was very interesting when it was happening to you."

     Then I stopped, because Mr. Chang was making strangly sounds. So I told her how much I had liked her speech, and it was true, because I was not nervous about talking to her anymore. And I said I was almost sorry I wasn't doing her for my project, but since everyone else was --

     "I quite understand," she said. "So whom are you doing?"

     "I don't know yet," I said. And I told her about Hatshepsut, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Harry S Truman.

     "I decided that I would do you," Marimeia put in. "Can I interview you for it sometime?"

     "Of course," Relena said. "After dinner on Tuesday?"

     "I bet your project blows Lisa's right out of the water," I said. "You'll get to talk to what Ms. Lee calls The Sources yourself and get all kinds of -- "

     Then I stopped.

     "What is it?" Marimeia said.

     "Well," I said. I was smiling so much that I thought maybe my face was going to hurt. "Pharaoh Hatshepsut is too early. And Queen Eleanor is too early. And President Truman is too early."

     Marimeia and Relena nodded in a go-on way.

     "But I bet Marimeia isn't too early."

     Marimeia started grinning. "That's a great idea!"

     I'd kind of liked it myself.

     "You'll want to talk to Anne and Mr. Chang and niichan, of course," she said, "and Ivan and... um..." She looked at Relena.

     "I'd be happy to set up an appointment," Relena told me. "Or perhaps you could come over for dinner the same day I impose on Anne?"

     "And Cousin Dorothy, for the Family Background bit -- she knew some of my mother's people too, and... hmm, I wonder where the circus is these days, maybe we could set up a chat..."

     Marimeia's family runs into the most interesting tangles.

     I guess Mama was right, and the best ideas do come right before you hit a deadline.

     And that is why I picked Marimeia Khushrenada, which is so her name even if the school office says it isn't, as the person from recent history that I admire.