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By the time I got home to my apartment, I was bawling like a baby. There was no way I could miss the MTV Awards. But if I skipped the physics final, I was not going to make the dean’s list. Moreover, I was going to fail physics and have to take it again. I knew that by going to the awards with Kevin, I’d be throwing away a whole semester of hard work. Still, I called everybody I knew in the hopes that someone would say I should blow off the exam.

So I called Leslie and tried to work the publicity angle.

“Do you know how much press I would get if I showed up on the red carpet with Kevin?”

“A ton,” Leslie said. “But not enough to throw away a whole semester of hard work at an Ivy League school. Come on, Bee, you’re smart. Do the math.”

I called Prageeta, Elsie, and Melody. None of them would back me up.

Steeling myself for the truly tough call of the day, I hit Kevin on his cell.

“Where you at?” I asked.

“At the studio, laying down some tracks,” he said.

“Can I come by?”

“What’s up, Bee?” Kevin knew that I wouldn’t bother him in the studio unless it was serious.

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

I hopped in the cab down to the Village to the Electric Lady Studios, where Kevin liked to record. The studio had been built in the sixties by Jimi Hendrix, and all these musical giants had recorded there—John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Curtis Mayfield. It was a cool space—apparently Jimi Hendrix had asked for all “soft curves and no right angles.”

Kevin’s crew—his band, engineers, agent, label exec, and all of their groupies—were hanging out in studio A, so we slipped into studio C, which was empty. It was a small room with purple velvet walls and gold sound panels. I couldn’t help but notice that squarely situated above his perfect jaw, Kevin also had a beautiful pair of full lips. They were plump as pillows, and I really wanted to kiss him. He took a seat at the piano, then gestured for me to sit next to him. He began to play a song that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t even know he could play piano.

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “What is it?”

“Louis Armstrong,” he said, then doing a mean Satchmo impersonation, he began to sing, “I see trees of green / red roses too / I see ’em bloom / for me and you / and I think to myself / what a wonderful world.”

Memo to self: Heavenly moment. Gorgeous guy serenading me in world-famous recording studio. Never forget how good being in like can be. Especially if you have a feeling that what you’re going to say next will ruin everything.

“Kev,” I said. “I can’t go with you tomorrow night.”

“Why not?” he asked. He had stopped playing the piano.

“I’ve got to take my physics final,” I explained. “I had a Cover Girl commercial last week and I missed it. This was the appointed makeup time, and now my prof won’t let me change.”

He turned back to the piano and started to play “What a Wonderful World” again.

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” he said nonchalantly.

“Are you mad?”

“No, I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m disappointed. I hate going to those things. I’m not even nominated; I’m just going to present an award to newcomer of the year. I wanted to have my thoroughest girl with me.”

Then before I could stop the words from coming out of my mouth, I said, “You could go with my friend Chela.”

Open mouth. Insert entire mentally challenged foot.

“Who?” Kevin said.

“My friend Chela. She’s really pretty,” I continued, trying to dig myself out of the self-esteem hole but only burying myself further.

“Please,” Kevin said. “Pretty is a dime a dozen. You’re pretty and smart.”

He gave me this devilish look. “You don’t have a crush on your teacher, do you?”

He was playing with me. Everything was going to be okay.

“My physics teacher is a she,” I started.

“That’s hot,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” I said, laughing. “Professor Trotman is a slightly cross-eyed Canadian with buckteeth and a beak of a nose.”

“Okay, scratch that,” he said.

“But if I do well on the exam, then I’ll have a 3.8 average and I’ll make the dean’s list,” I said.

Kevin turned around and stood up. He was suddenly very close to me.

“A 3.8,” he said, leaning closer. “Now
that’s
hot.”

Was he going to kiss me? Oh my God. But he didn’t. He just winked and then showed me the way back out of the studio.

I took the exam, and despite Professor Trotter humming what I could only imagine were Mountie campfire songs the whole time, I was pretty sure I aced it. I went to bed Tuesday night exhausted but happy.

Wednesday morning was a whole other matter entirely.

I got up and saw Kevin on MTV News.

“Kevin Manning and Savannah Hughes,” the MTV News announcer said. “They were all over each other at the MTV Awards last night.”

I turned off the TV and tried to fight back tears. I know Kevin and I aren’t dating, but he was one of my best pals. My cute, sexy, boy who’s not my boyfriend pal. He could date whomever he wanted, but not Savannah Hughes. Anybody but Savannah Hughes.

I threw on a pair of sweats and went to the newsstand on the corner of Columbus and 110th. I picked up the Daily News and the New York Post and then went to H&H for a hot bagel with cream cheese. I wasn’t going to make it through the day without carbs.

Back in my room, I turned immediately to the gossip pages. Kevin and Savannah were the lead item in both papers.

My cell started to ring. It was Kevin. I let it go to voice mail.

I turned on my computer and googled DJ Drop and Roll and Savannah Hughes and got a gazillion hits. It was everywhere: MTV, E!, VH1, the CW, even CNN had an item about it. C-freaking-N-N. They were supposed to carry real news, not dregs from the bottom of the gossip pool.

My phone was ringing again. Kevin. I let it go to voice mail.

I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I took off my sweats and took a hard long look in the mirror. Savannah Hughes was skinny again, and she looked amazing. I was crazy to think that I could compete with the likes of her. Kevin had probably been playing with me from the start. I’d made a small fortune proclaiming to the world that I loved my baby fat. But I didn’t. Not today. I got dressed and went back to my room.

The phone was ringing. It was Kevin again. I figured I might as well get it over with.

“Hello,” I said. “Fat Girl, Inc.”

Open mouth. Insert all too familiar foot.

“What did you say?” Kevin asked.

“Fat Girl, Inc.,” I said, repeating the words that were almost too painful to say. But there was some part of me that felt like if I was mean to myself first, it would hurt less when he was mean.

“Whatever,” Kevin said, ignoring me. “I need to talk to you about last night. Can you come meet me at the studio again?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve got a Lean Cuisine in the oven, and then I’ve got a photo shoot for Big Girl Panties that I absolutely can’t miss.”

“What is up with you?” he said, sounding genuinely puzzled.

I wanted to say, “You. You’re what’s up with me. I take my freaking physics exam and you go to the MTV Awards with a skinny model. And not just any skinny model, but a skinny model who for some reason known only to her and God hates my guts. You hurt me, Kevin, and I’m afraid to see you because I’m afraid you’ll just hurt me more.”

So I said, “It was fun while it lasted, Kev. Gotta love the Baby Phat girls. More cushion for the pushing, right?”

“You have lost it, Bee,” Kev said. “The pictures were my fault, but all this is on you. You can’t love someone more than she loves herself.”

And with that, he hung up the phone.

Was I right? Had he said that he loved me? Was that even what he meant? I looked at the pictures of Kevin and Savannah in the newspapers, and I knew that I had heard him wrong. He loved me like a friend, if that. He and Savannah were clearly more, much more, than friends.

What was I thinking? He had the number-one video in the country, and two of those video dancers could fit into one pair of my jeans. And the line about the junk in my trunk? What he meant was that I was fat. I was just junk.

Leslie had warned me about this. She had said to be careful, that a lot of guys would want to get with me just to say that they had. When Kevin was driving his Lexus truck through Times Square, did he want to nod at the billboard and say, “Oh yeah, that chick, I hooked her.”

Thank God, I didn’t kiss him.

Thank God, I didn’t kiss him.

Thank God, I didn’t kiss him.