"Steal the painting? You want to steal your own painting! You are crazy," Gina said. "I can't even believe it." She looked shocked. But, a moment later she offered, "How can I help?"
"You have Scream with you," Kate observed, changing the subject for a moment.
"Yeah, I traded him back so I could take him to that scream contest. It was yesterday. Can you believe it? Scream didn't even win. And I thought we'd be a winner," Gina said, with a sigh.
"Oh well," was all Kate could say. She didn't care much for the idea of The Scream being in a movie. He was real, but he wasn't quite real. Of course, maybe that worked perfectly for a scary movie. It had been a while since she had seen a good, scary movie.
Gina asked, "So, how do we do it? Where is it anyway? Is it with the principal or at the mall?"
"I don't know," Kate answered. She hadn't thought much about that.
"Maybe we should find out," said Gina, suddenly grabbing Kate's hands and dragging her down the hallway to the principal's office. Mona Lisa and The Scream followed.
"You ever wonder if the principal cares about us," chatted Gina quickly. "I mean he sits there and makes decisions and calls bad kids into his office. He comes to assemblies and looks all official. But, we don't know a thing about him. I mean, like what is his favorite book. Did he ever wear really ugly shoes as a kid? Who was his first crush? Could he give us advice on things like that besides school? And what is his favorite painting? I know he has a Claude Monet poster on his wall but that's all he has. Maybe he should have a wall full of kid art or maybe funny pictures taken in one of those little mall picture booths."
"How do you know what is on his wall," Kate asked.
Gina replied, a little reluctantly. "Well, I have been in there a few times."
"Great, I have an outlaw doing some outlaw work," said Kate with a laugh.
Gina didn't laugh. She had some deep thoughts that had to get out. "Well, I think maybe I could appreciate authority a little more if I knew these things."
All Kate could say was, "They do care, but I guess they are like most of us. They really don't know how to show their feelings, and neither do we, sometimes."
"Well, I guess I can understand that." She returned to her funny self, and added, "I think they would be speechless if we told them what we are doing now."
