She says she didn't mean to. She says she found them in my room, and they were so good she couldn't help showing them to Mom.

Of course, it never occurred to Lucy that she shouldn't have been in my room in the first place. When I accused her of completely violating my constitutionally protected right to personal privacy, she just looked at me like, Huh? even though she is fully taking U.S. Government this semester.

Her excuse is that she was looking for her eyelash curler.

Hello. Like I would borrow anything of hers. Especially something that had been near her big, bulbous eyeballs.

Instead of her eyelash curler, which of course I didn't have, Lucy found this week's stash of drawings, and she presented them to Mom at dinner that night.

"Well," Mom said in this very dry voice. "Now we know how you got that C-minus in German, don't we, Sam?"

This was on account of the fact that the drawings were in my German notebook.

"Is this supposed to be that guy from The Patriot?" my dad wanted to know. "Who is that you've drawn with him? Is that . . . is that Catherine?"

"German," I said, feeling that they were missing the point, "is a stupid language."

"German isn't stupid," my little sister Rebecca informed me. "The Germans can trace their heritage back to ethnic groups that existed during the days of the Roman Empire. Their language is an ancient and beautiful one that was created thousands of years ago."

"Whatever," I said. "Did you know that they capitalize all of their nouns? What is up with that?"

"Hmmm," my mother said, flipping to the front of my German notebook. "What have we here?"

My dad went, "Sam, what are you doing drawing pictures of Catherine on the back of a horse with that guy from The Patriot?"

"I think this will explain it, Richard," my mother said, and she passed the notebook back to my dad.

In my own defense, I can only state that, for better or for worse, we live in a capitalistic society. I was merely enacting my rights of individual initiative by supplying the public -- in the form of most of the female student population at John Adams Preparatory School -- with a product for which I saw there was a demand. You would think that my dad, who is an international economist with the World Bank, would understand this.

But as he read aloud from my German notebook in an astonished voice, I could tell he did not understand. He did not understand at all.

"You and Josh Hartnett," my dad read, "fifteen dollars. You and Josh Hartnett on a desert island, twenty dollars. You and Justin Timberlake, ten dollars. You and Justin Timberlake under a waterfall, fifteen dollars. You and Keanu Reeves, fifteen dollars. You and -- " My dad looked up. "Why are Keanu and Josh more than Justin?"

"Because," I explained, "Justin has less hair."

"Oh," my dad said. "I see." He went back to the list.

"You and Keanu Reeves white-water rafting, twenty dollars. You and James Van Der Beek, fifteen dollars. You and James Van Der Beek hang-gliding, twenty -- "

But my mom didn't let him go on for much longer.

"Clearly," she said in her courtroom voice -- my mom is an environmental lawyer; one thing you do not want to do is anything that would make Mom use her courtroom voice -- "Samantha is having trouble concentrating in German class. The reason why she is having trouble concentrating in German class appears to be because she is suffering from not having an outlet for all her creative energy. I believe if such an outlet were provided for her, her grades in German class would improve dramatically."

Which would explain why the next day my mom came home from work, pointed at me, and went, "Tuesdays and Thursdays, from three thirty to five thirty, you will now be taking art lessons, young lady."

Whoa. Talk about harsh.

Apparently it has not occurred to my mother that I can draw perfectly well without ever having had a lesson. Except for, you know, in school. Apparently my mother doesn't realize that art lessons, far from providing me with an outlet for my creative energy, are just going to utterly stamp out any natural ability and individual style I might have had. How will I ever be able to stay true to my own vision, like van Gogh, with someone hovering over my shoulder, telling me what to do?

"Thanks," I said to Lucy when I ran into her a little while later in the bathroom we shared. She was separating her eyelashes with a safety pin in front of the mirror, even though our housekeeper, Theresa, has told Lucy a thousand times about her cousin Rosa, who put out an eye that way.

Lucy looked past the safety pin at me. "What'd I do?"

I couldn't believe she didn't know. "You told on me," I cried, "about the whole drawing thing!"

"God, you 'tard," Lucy said, going to work on her lower lashes. "Don't even tell me you're upset about that. I so totally did you a favor."

"A favor?" I was shocked. "I got into big trouble because of what you did! Now I have to go to some stupid, lame art class twice a week after school, when I could be, you know . . . watching TV."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "You so don't get it, do you? You're my sister. I can't just stand by and let you become the biggest freak of the entire school. You won't participate in extracurriculars. You wear that hideous black all the time. You won't let me fix your hair. I mean, I had to do something. This way, who knows? Maybe you'll be a famous artist. Like Georgia O'Keeffe."

"Do you even know what Georgia O'Keeffe is famous for painting, Lucy?" I asked, and when she said no, I told her:

Vaginas. That's what Georgia O'Keeffe was famous for painting.

Or as Rebecca put it, as she came ambling past with her nose buried in the latest installment of the Star Trek saga, with which she is obsessed, "Actually, Ms. O'Keeffe's organic abstract images are lush representations of flowers that are strongly sexual in symbolic content."

I told Lucy to ask Jack if she didn't believe me. But Lucy said she and Jack don't discuss things like that with one another.

I was all, "You mean vaginas?" but Lucy said no, art.

I don't get this. I mean, she is going out with an artist, and yet the two of them never discuss art? I can tell you, if I ever get a boyfriend, we are going to discuss everything with one another. Even art. Even vaginas.