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water was walk right out of the doctor’s office. I got back into the limo and told the chauffeur to take me to Emerald Planet right away, so I could get a smoothie.
    Fortunately the chauffeur knew better than to take me somewhere without my bodyguard. He got on the radio and said some stuff, and then Lars came out to the limo with my dad, who asked me what on earth I thought I was doing.
    I thought about asking him the exact same thing, only about the receptionist with the pierced belly button. But my throat hurt too much to talk.
    Dr. Fung was pretty nice about it in the end. He gave up on the throat culture and just prescribed some antibiotics and this cough syrup with codeine in it—but not until he had one of his nurses take a picture of us shaking hands together inside the limo so he could hang it on his wall of celebrity photos. He has pictures of himself up there shaking hands with other famous patients of his, like Robert Goulet and Lou Reed.
    Now that my raging fever has gone down, I can see that I was behaving completely irrationally. I would have to say that that trip to the doctor’s office was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Of course, there’ve been so many, it’s hard to tell where this one ranks. I think I would chalk it up there with the time I accidentally dropped my dinner plate in the buffet line at Lilly’s bat mitzvah, and everybody kept stepping in gefiltefish for the rest of the night.
    MIA THERMOPOLIS’S TOP FIVE MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENTS
           1. Josh Richter kissing me in front of the whole school while everyone looked at me.
           2. The time when I was six and Grandmère ordered me to hug her sister, Tante Jean Marie, and I started to cry because I was afraid of Jean Marie’s mustache, and hurt Jean Marie’s feelings.
           3. The time when I was seven and Grandmère forced me to attend a boring cocktail party she gave for all her friends, and I was so bored I picked up this little ivory coaster holder which was shaped like a rickshaw, and then I wheeled it around the coffee table, making noises like I was speaking Chinese, until all the coasters fell out the back of the rickshaw and rolled around on the floor very noisily, and everyone looked at me. (This is even more embarrassing when I think of it now, because imitating Chinese people is very rude, not to mention politically incorrect.)
           4. The time when I was ten and Grandmère took me and some of my cousins to the beach and I forgot my bikini top and Grandmère wouldn’t let me go back to the chateau to get it, she said this was France for God’s sake and I should just go topless like everybody else, and even though I didn’t have anything more up there to show than I do now, I was mortified and wouldn’t take my shirt off and everyone looked at me because they thought I had a rash or disfiguring birthmark or a shriveled-up Siamese-twin fetus hanging off me.
           5. The time when I was twelve and I got my first period, and I was at Grandmère’s house and I had to tell her about it because I didn’t have any pads or anything, and later that night as I walked in for dinner I overheard Grandmère telling all her friends about it, and then for the rest of the night all they did was make jokes about the wonder of womanhood.
    Now that I think about it, almost all of the most embarrassing moments of my life have something to do with Grandmère.
    I wonder what Lilly’s parents, who are both psychoanalysts, would have to say about this.
    TEMPERATURE CHART
    5:20 p.m.—99.3
    6:45 p.m.—99.2
    7:52 p.m.—99.1
    Is it possible I am getting better already ? This is horrible. If I get better, I’ll have to go on that stupid interview. . . .
    This calls for drastic measures: Tonight I fully intend to take a shower and stick my head out the window with my hair wet.
    That will show them.

Thursday, October 23
    Oh, my God. Something so exciting just happened, I