and picked out books for Georgie to read. Even though The Richest Girl in the Universe could have purchased every book in the city and still have enough left over to buy a few planets, Georgie thought it was lovely to be able to borrow any book you wanted, and then bring it back and exchange it for another.
Before you think Georgie a skull short of a full skeleton, you must understand that there were very good reasons for Georgie’s lack of interest in the truly mind-boggling amount of money she had. You see, Georgetta Rose Aster Bloomington wasn’t always The Richest Girl in the Universe. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t always known as Georgetta Rose Aster Bloomington. Just six months before, Georgetta Rose Aster Bloomington was a girl named Gurl who lived in a miserable orphanage. There, she spent much of her time daydreaming about a happy life, a real life, without ever expecting to live one. But reality turned out to be more mind-boggling than any daydream. Half a year ago, she learned a lot of things about her life, among them:
1 That she had been kidnapped by the gangster Sweetcheeks Grabowski when she was just a baby.
2 That she was subsequently lost by the gangster Sweetcheeks Grabowski because of a special power she had, the power to turn herself invisible.
3 That she was found by a homeless woman and given to an orphanage called Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless.
4 That Georgie escaped Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless with the help of her good friend Bug, who turned out to be none other than the son of the gangster Sweetcheeks Grabowski.
5 That her real parents were The Richest Couple in the Universe. And finally:
6 That this was an awful lot for a person to take in and still remain sane.
But Georgie was doing her best to adjust to her new life as well as she could, and that included trying to ignore the snotty second-, third-and fourth-richest girls in the universe and paying attention on school trips. Up ahead, Ms Storia was yammering enthusiastically about the development of marsupials. At least that was better than the teachers at Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless. The only animals they ever wanted to talk about were the ones that could fly.
“Next up,” Ms Storia said, “is the Hall of Flight! We’ll see birds, of course, but also flying squirrels and insects! And we’ll see how scientists are studying the evolution of human flight! Isn’t that fascinating?”
Sigh.
“We are going to learn so many important things!”
Uh-huh, thought Georgie. The most important thing that Georgie had learned in the last six months was the fact that money does not buy happiness. Because as happy as Georgie was with her parents, there were many other things that made Georgie unhappy.
“Ow!” said Bethany Tiffany when Georgie accidentally crashed into her.
“Sorry,” Georgie muttered.
“That is the third time you’ve bumped into me!” Bethany said, rubbing her elbow as if Georgie had hit it with a hammer.
“I said sorry.”
“You’re always bumping into people and you’re always sorry.”
Georgie clenched her teeth to refrain from saying something rude about Bethany’s tiara. Georgie’d had a growth spurt that had happened overnight and her body wasn’t her own any more. The doctor said it was from good nutrition and seemed pleased by this turn of events. Georgie, whose joints ached and whose feet grew so fast that her parents couldn’t keep her in shoes, wasn’t as pleased. She felt like a marionette, all arms and legs jangling and none of them ever under her control.
This wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t a leadfoot – a person who couldn’t fly at all. Apparently, you can have more money than everyone in the universe put together, but if you can’t fly even a smidge, well, then you might as well be living in Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless, eating lard on toast and getting pounded by a girl called Digger (who got her name because she picked her nose). And it didn’t matter that Georgie had a special power all her own. The fact that she could turn herself invisible – that she was the first person in more than a century who could – was the reason she had been kidnapped by Sweetcheeks Grabowski in the first place. Her parents didn’t want to take the risk ever again. They had made her promise that she wouldn’t use the power or even mention it. They had told her to trust no one with her secrets. And that meant that it was impossible to make a real friend.
“Fly, I mean, walk with us, Georgetta.”
The red-haired goddess herself, Roma Radisson, appeared next to Bethany Tiffany and London England. Georgie was immediately suspicious.
“Georgie,” Roma simpered. “We were just kidding before. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
Right, thought Georgie. Roma meant every spiteful word she said. But then, even with everything Georgie had been through, she was a deeply curious girl, the kind of girl who watches the world and misses nothing; she wanted to know why Roma was talking to her. And though she would never have admitted it, Georgie was also a hopeful girl. In the back of her mind, a little voice told her that maybe, maybe, if she were nice to Roma, if she could joke and laugh like the rest of the girls, Roma might be nice to her.
“Tell us,” Roma said. “Were you really kidnapped when you were a baby?”
Even though the story had been in the papers for months and months, everyone always asked the same questions over and over again, as if Georgie would suddenly answer them differently. “I was kidnapped by Sweetcheeks Grabowski. He’s in jail.”
“Amazing!” said London. “And is it true that no one could find you for years and years, and you lived in an orphanage practically your whole life?”
Georgie nodded. “I didn’t even know my real name.”
“Speaking of real,” London said, eyeing Georgie’s thick silver ponytail and fluffing her own blond curls with her fingers, “is that your real hair?”
“Whose hair would it be?” Georgie joked.
The other girls gave each other funny looks, and not the kind that indicated they thought Georgie’s joke was amusing. “Well, anyway,” said Roma, fanning the air. “I bet that orphanage was just so grimy and horrible. I did a TV special once where I had to meet some poor people. They sent me to a farm. I had to pick tomatoes. Awful! I had dirt under my fingernails and everything!”
“At least you could have eaten the tomatoes,” Georgie said. “At the orphanage, I was always hungry.” The girls gaped at her. So much for joking. Since Georgie was always trying not to reveal too much, she was prone to saying strange and unfunny things. (When you’ve spent years in an orphanage shunned by everyone but a cat, you’re prone to saying strange and unfunny things.) Georgie cleared her throat. “So, you were on TV? Was it, uh, cool?”
“She’s been on TV thousands of times,” Bethany said, eyes so green that Georgie wondered if Bethany had ordered them from a boutique. “You haven’t seen Roma’s advert for Cherry Bomb lip balm?”
“Or the video from her new CD, Don’t Get Up, Get Down?” said London.
“Or the ads for Jump Jeans?” said Roma.
“No,”
