Artemis and Minerva were seated in the Breakfast Hall (as opposed to the Dining Hall, the Supper Hall, and the Elegant Dinner Hall) sipping coffe (in Minerva’s case) and tea (Artemis) and reading newpapers. One of the maids was in the adjacent kitchen, making breakfast. It smelled like oatmeal.
Ew.
Trudging past my parents to the kitchen, I discovered that today’s meal was, in fact, oatmeal, and therefore I must find something else to eat or die of internal hemorrhaging. Artemis said this would never actually happen, but I said I’d never try oatmeal so I guessed he’d never find out. He would humph, and leave me to my cereal. Speaking of which…

“Hey Mom,” (it still felt odd calling Minerva this, but she insisted) “what happened to my cereal?”
She sighed disapprovingly. “I had one of the maids throw it out.”
“Why? It was perfectly fine!”
“Diana, it expired two weeks ago! Why can’t you just eat oatmeal like your father and I?”
“Because I don’t like oatmeal.”
“Well then I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to suffer.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
Without looking up from his newspaper, Artemis said, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you skip it now, you’ll become tired more easily and not have the energy to do all the things you normally like to do on a Saturday.” With a sniff to ell me just what he thought of what I liked to do - generally playing computer games or shopping - he ruffled his newspaper and ignored the resto f the world again.

I sat down at the far end of the table and started picking at one of the oranges that was put there as a decoration. I attempted to take the entire rind off in one piece, and when that failed, to make a smiley face out of missing rind. I was just about to finish the nose when Minerva said, “Diana, I’d like to talk about your grades.”
Picking a miniscule piece of rind out from underneath my fingernail, I started on the mouth of the orange. “What about them?”
“Well, you seem to be having a bit of trouble in school.”
Drat. My finger had slipped, and the nails that I kept long to annoy Artemis had gouged out a chunk farther down than I had wanted. “I’ve got A’s and B’s, Mom. I’m not having trouble.”
“That’s it, though. B’s. Is there something bothering you, is the teacher not right…”
I’d just have to compensate with pulling some rind off the other side of the smile. “No, the teacher’s fine.”
“I realize that the move may have been difficult for you - is there anything troubling you?”
Damn. Now the smile leered drunkenly off the face of the orange.”No, everything’s fine Mom. I’m just not that great at Literature.”
“Well, why not?”
Intruiged by the…difference… of my orange’s face, I started work on two vampire fangs. “I dunno. I just don’t see where my Lit teacher gets off saying that A Separate Peace is supposed to represent World War II. It’s just two guys that go to a boarding school.”
“The author used World War II to create the semblance of peace within the school, while in reality it was just as dangerous in there was it was in the world. See? It’s easy.”
Fangs abandoned, I started ripping off random chunks of rind. “Whatev.”
Artemis could take the strain no longer. “Diana, ‘whatev’ is not a word. Neither is ‘dunno’. While ‘guys’ may be accepted in the dictionary, it is not used in conversation here. Please refrain from using slang around this house.”
The smiley had deteriorated into a ripped up orange. I licked a piece of fruit off my thumb, stood up from the table, and left the room.
If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
I left the house, and walked out to the kennels where Thumper and Maxwell, the two dogs Minerva had gotten me as a “coming home” present, waited eagerly. Thumper was a Belgian Tervuren, something I hadn’t even known existed until Minerva showed up with this furball on a leash, and Maxwell was a Komondor, the kind that look like they had a dust mop superglued onto their fur. Technically, one of the help was supposed to walk them, but I liked to do it when I was angry because it gave me a good excuse to get out of the house.
After about 45 minutes of being dragged around the countryside by a hyperactive, one-year-old puppy and a three-year-old mop, I decided to head for home.

Butler was waiting for me at the gate. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Some other stories by Salali:

• Goodbye
• Enemy of Old
• 100 Years
• The Daughter of a Legend
• The Fisherman's Tale