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TACO had this notion that school was just free babbysitting, and so he sent Taquita off to Morning Glory to get her out of his hair for a bit. Taquita had been begging him all day to take her to the bookstore, but her father was having none of that. What he was going to have was a really wicked party, and thus he needed to ditch his child somewhere.

Taquita sulked. It's not that she really liked her dad, but she didn't like sharing him with floozies either. It was the principle of the matter.

But all wasn't lost. She got to spend the day with another intelligent phony. They seemed to be a rarity here. Taquita had all sorts of conversations with other phonies, but they were mostly devoid of substance. Especially the babbies; Taquita was so above that whole 'play in the sandbox' thing.

Making sure her notebook was securely in her saddlebag, and that she was set for the day, Taquita gave a knock on Glory's door.

"More excited than I usually am about these things," Taquita replied. Her excitement scale really only went from 1 - 3 instead of 1 - 10.

"You must be Morning Glory. My dad said you were going to watch me for the day. I was hoping you were going to teach me something too." The Phonyland School District had been in the papers lately with coverage of their excessive budget cuts. This left them with only one teacher. Taquita hoped that they kept the most qualified one, but that may have been an unrealistic wish. The owners of Phonyland weren't very concerned with their products being very intelligent, just so long as they looked nice for the buyers. Case in point, her dad, TACO.

Although his looks only really catered to a specific demographic.

Taquita set her bag down on a desk, and began to pull out her notebook and pencil. "Shall we get started, then?"

Taquita stared at the aptitude test. It looked like a colossal waste of time. Fortunately, all Taquita had was time. And thankfully, Taquita was already reading on a high level for her age. Intelligence-wise, she was like a little adult. Maturity-wise though, her snooty level was on par with the most self-absorbed teenagers. She still had a lot of growing up to do.

Taquita raced through the test as if there were a prize for finishing quickly. She wanted to impress Morning Glory with how smart she was. In fact, Taquita was looking forward to when her teacher would grade the test and then tell her that she was the smartest student she's ever had.

Admittedly, Taquita had to guess the answers on the math portion because no one had taken the time to show it to her yet, but she was sure that all of her guesses were correct. All TACO had told her when she asked about math was, "I know my Calculus, it says You plus Me equals Us". And even if her guesses weren't the greatest she was confident that her reading and writing scores would be perfect, and thus make up for it.

Taquita's wide and boastful smile quickly faded into the meanest scowl ever seen on a little phony. 'Did she just call me flawed?' Staring up at the lone remedial math book atop the mountain of homework, Taquita felt nothing but disdain for the smudge on her magnificence.

But of course, it was her lot in life to never have anything go her way. She was miserable. Her existence was the worst. Everything was woe and misery! Her head thunked down on her desk. Could her day be any more horrible?

"Alright," Taquita said in a deflated tone, "where do we start?"

Well, at least it started out easy. "There would be three apples for me to eat then." She considered clopping her hoof three times, but Taquita didn't buy into stereotypes like that.

It was good that her teacher had confidence in her though. Taquita was fine with simple math that one used every day, but beyond that... well, beyond that she was going to need more of Glory's peppy talk. Otherwise she was pretty sure that the day was going to be a failure.

Taquita shrugged. "But why would I want to give one to PARTY?" she asked, "Can't he go and get his own apple?" She was pretty sure that was not the answer to the math problem though, and she didn't want her teacher to think she was too dumb to subtract by one. "If I did share my apples," Taquita said with a haughty tone, "I would have two apples left."

"Well, I suppose they'd be happy. I wouldn't want my brothers to be unhappy." While she didn't exactly like her family all of the time, Taquita still wouldn't like if if they were sad. Then again, three apples would make her extra happy, something she wasn't very often. She weighed the pros and cons of this potential added joy from extra apples vs. the discontent of her brothers. Ultimately, it would be better if they were all happy. Some garbage she remembered hearing about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few or the one. People said strange things sometimes.

"So, once I gave one apple to PARTY, and one to Draft Punk, I would have one apple left for myself, and we'd all be happy together," she said in an almost sad tone. It was the correct answer, but she wasn't exactly excited about it.

Stroking Taquita's ego was indeed the fastest way to her heart. "Yes, it would be really generous of me to help out my less intelligently gifted brothers." Her usual frown turned upside down, and she beamed with superiority.

She tucked her notebook and her new math book in her saddlebag, and got ready to leave. "Thanks, Glory. I'd say it's been fun, but it wouldn't be entirely true to say that. It was mostly fun, and I guess I'm looking forward to doing it again. I'll make sure that next time you tutor my brothers, they have a good grasp on the subject materiel."