Ari

Man, I can't tell you how glad I am to have my car back. It feels sooooo goooood.



So, anyway, I decided to go and turn in my story for school, right, and turns out my Simlish teacher made me write it so she could put me in the school literary club. I was, like, oh, great, I get to hang around with the geeks. But she tells me that Aunt Margaret (who's only, like, Sunset Valley's most successful novelist ever) was in the writing club, as well as my father before he left school. "With those kinds of credentials," she tells me, "you should be a shoo-in." She didn't care if the story was any good (IMO it's crap); all she cared about was that she had a Plumb in her club.
"What if I can't write worth a crap?" I protested.
"I've seen your essays, Savannah Plumb," she said. "You can write."

At the literary club meeting I met this girl, Ari Moore. She'd just moved to Sunset Valley from Riverview, and the teacher matched us up so she could catch up on our Simlish assignments. Apparently the schools in Riverview aren't as good as here (no offense).



So I rode cross town to Ari's place in the dinky yellow school bus. While we were on the bus we talked some more: her real full name is Ariana Southerland Moore, she's a junior (like me), her parents were killed in some accident so she's staying in the old McIrish place on Oak Grove, across the street from the Paines, with a family friend named Cherry (I'm not kidding) Kanto.

"You comin' or not?" she asked brusquely. "You followed me here, not the other way around." I told her I was, I couldn't walk that fast in these heels, and it's not every day I come to this part of town, even though the Paines, old family friends of ours that date back to my grandma, live here.

I recognized an easel and a guitar and a chess board; either those belonged to Ari or they were for the previous owners. "Wha'd you say your name was?"
"Savannah Rachel Plumb." I was careful to enunciate 'Rachel' as 'ruh-shell' and not the typical Rachel. "My mother's idea, I'm afraid."
"Cute," Ari said. Everything on her was black -- her lipstick, her hair, her sweater, even her hat. The only spot of color on her was her ripped jeans. "Say, you're not related to the author Meg Plumb, are you?"
It hit me that Ari's "Meg" was actually Aunt Margaret. She'd kill any of us if we called her anything other than Margaret, but for some reason my dad seems to be able to get away with calling her Maggie. I knew my parents were famous, but this was the first time I realized Aunt Margaret was probably as famous as they are. I mean, I knew she wrote books, and I knew she wrote a lot of them. "Um, yeah," I squealed, "she's my aunt!"

"Meg Plumb is your aunt?!?" The ground-bound Ari leapt for joy. "My god, she's a literary genius! I've read all of her books at least once. I love her Moon Colony series. I keep a copy of the first Moon Colony book right next to my bed. I've read all of them, but that one was my favorite."

Now she had me curious. "Why?" I asked her.

"I love the main character, Syna (pronounced like "Sheena") DeLorean. At first she starts out like your typical spoiled princess, 'cause she's the daughter of the NASA chief, but when she's thrust on the mission and things start happening to her and the crew on the colony, ya know, she -- she gets a backbone. She takes charge of the mission, tapping into a strength she didn't know she had."

Hmm, gonna have to ask Aunt Margaret about that one.