Princess in the Spotlight (17 page)

Right?

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to jump up from my computer and run around my room and scream and laugh at the same time.

Instead—and I don’t know where I got the presence of mind to do this, I wrote back:

F
T
L
OUIE:
I hope so.

I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. Michael is Jo-C-rox.

Right?

What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

I woke with the strangest feeling of foreboding. I couldn’t figure out why for a few minutes. I lay there in bed, listening to the rain patter against my window. Fat Louie was at the end of my bed, kneading the comforter and purring very loudly.

Then I remembered: Today, according to my grandmother, is the day my pregnant mother is supposed to marry my Algebra teacher in a huge ceremony at the Plaza Hotel, with musical accompaniment courtesy of John Tesh.

I lay there for a minute, wishing my temperature was one hundred and two again, so I wouldn’t have to get out of bed and face what was sure to be a day of drama and hurt feelings.

And then I remembered my e-mail from the night before, and jumped right out of bed.

Michael is my secret admirer! Michael is Jo-C-rox!

And with any luck, by the end of the night, he’ll have admitted it to my face!

Mr. Gianini is not here today. Instead, we have a substitute teacher named Mrs. Krakowski.

It is very strange that Mr. G isn’t here, because he was certainly in the loft this morning. We played a game of foozball before Lars showed up in the limo. We even offered Mr. G a ride to school, but he said he was coming in later.

Really
later, it looks like.

A lot of people aren’t here today, actually. Michael, for instance, didn’t catch a ride with us this morning. Lilly says that is because he had last-minute problems printing out a paper that is due today.

But I wonder if it is really because he is too scared to face me after admitting that he is Jo-C-rox.

Well, not that he actually admitted it. But he sort of did.

Didn’t he?

Mr. Howell is three times as old as Gilligan. The difference in their ages is 48. How old are Mr. Howell and Gilligan?

T
=Gilligan

3T
=Mr. Howell

3T–T=48

2T=48

T=24

Oh, Mr G, where ARE you?

Okay.

I will never underestimate Lilly Moscovitz again. Nor will I suspect her of having anything but the most altruistic motives. This I hereby solemnly swear in writing.

It was at lunch when it happened:

We were all sitting there—me, my bodyguard, Tina Hakim Baba and her bodyguard, Lilly, Boris, Shameeka, and Ling Su. Michael, of course, sits over with the rest of the Computer Club, so he wasn’t there, but everybody else who mattered was.

Shameeka was reading aloud to us from some of the brochures her father had gotten from girls’ schools in New Hampshire. Each one filled Shameeka with more terror, and me with more shame for ever having opened my big mouth in the first place.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over our little table.

We looked up.

There stood an apparition of such godlike stature that for a minute, I think even Lilly believed the chosen people’s long lost Messiah had finally shown up.

It turned out it was only Hank—but Hank looking as I had certainly never seen him before. He had on a black cashmere sweater beneath a clinging black leather coat, and black jeans that seemed to go on and on over his long, lean legs. His golden hair had been expertly styled and cut, and—I swear—he looked so much like Keanu Reeves in
The Matrix
that I actually might have believed he had wandered in off the set if it hadn’t been for the fact that on his feet, he wore cowboy boots. Black, expensive-looking ones, but cowboy boots, just the same.

I don’t think it was my imagination that the entire crowd inside the cafeteria seemed to gasp as Hank slid into a chair at our table—the reject table, I have frequently heard it called.

“Hello, Mia,” Hank said.

I stared at him. It wasn’t just the clothes. There was something . . . different about him. His voice seemed deeper, somehow. And he smelled . . . well, good.

“So,” Lilly said to him, as she scooped a glob of creamy filling out of her Ring Ding. “How’d it go?”

“Well,” Hank said, in that same deep voice. “You’re looking at Calvin Klein’s newest underwear model.”

Lilly sucked the filling off her finger. “Hmmm,” she said, with her mouth full. “Good for you.”

“I owe it all to you, Lilly,” Hank said. “If it weren’t for you, they never would have signed me.”

Then it hit me. The reason Hank seemed so different was that his Hoosier drawl was gone!

“Now, Hank,” Lilly said. “We discussed this. It’s your natural ability that got you where you are. I just gave you a few pointers.”

When Hank turned his gaze toward me, I saw that his sky-blue eyes were damp. “Your friend Lilly,” he said, “has done something no one’s ever done for me in my life.”

I threw an accusing gaze at Lilly.

I knew it. I
knew
they’d had sex.

But then Hank said, “She believed in me, Mia. Believed in me enough to help me pursue my dream . . . a dream I’ve had since I was a very young boy. A lot of people—including my own Mamaw and Pa—I mean, my grandparents—told me it was a pipe dream. They told me to give it up, that it would never happen. But when I told my dream to Lilly, she held out her hand”—Hank held out his hand to illustrate this, and all of us—me, Lars, Tina, Tina’s bodyguard Wahim, Shameeka, and Ling Su—looked at that hand, the nails of which had been perfectly manicured—“and said, ‘Come with me, Hank. I will help you achieve your dream.’”

Hank put his hand down. “And do you know what?”

All of us—except Lilly, who went right on eating—were so astonished, we could only stare.

Hank did not wait for us to reply. He said, “It happened. Today, it happened. My dream came true. I was signed by Ford. I am their newest male model.”

We all blinked at him.

“And I owe it all,” Hank said, “to this woman here.”

Then something really shocking happened. Hank got up out of his chair, walked over to where Lilly was sitting, innocently finishing her Ring Ding, not suspecting a thing, and pulled her to a standing position.

Then as everyone in the entire cafeteria looked on—including, I noticed, Lana Weinberger and all her cronies over at the cheerleaders’ table—my cousin Hank laid such a kiss on Lilly Moscovitz, I thought he just might suck that Ring Ding right back up again.

When he was done kissing her, Hank let go. And Lilly, looking as if someone had just poked her with an electric prod, sank slowly back down to her seat. Hank adjusted the lapels of his leather coat and turned to me.

“Mia,” he said. “Tell Mamaw and Papaw they’re going to have to find somebody to cover my shift at the hardware store. I ain’t—I mean, I’m
not
—going back to Versailles. Ever.”

And with that, he strode from our cafeteria like a cowboy walking away from a gunfight he’d just won.

Or I suppose I should say he
started
to stride from the cafeteria. Unfortunately for Hank, he didn’t make it out quite fast enough.

Because one of the people who had observed that searing kiss he’d laid on Lilly was none other than Boris Pelkowski.

And it was Boris Pelkowski—Boris Pelkowski, with his retainer and his sweater tucked into his pants—who stood up and said, “Not so fast, hot shot.”

I’m not sure if Boris had just seen the movie
Top Gun
or what, but that
hot shot
came out sounding pretty menacing, considering Boris’s accent and all.

Hank kept going. I don’t know if he hadn’t heard Boris, or if he wasn’t about to let some little violin-playing genius mess up his great exit.

Then Boris did something completely reckless. He reached out and grabbed Hank by the arm as he went by and said, “That’s
my
girl you had your lips all over, pretty boy.”

I am not even joking. Those were his exact words. Oh, how my heart thrilled to hear them! If only some guy (okay, Michael) would say something like that about me. Not the Josiest girl he’d ever met, but
his
girl. Boris had actually referred to Lilly as
his
girl! No boy has ever referred to me as
his
girl. Oh, I know all about feminism and how women aren’t property and it’s sexist to go around claiming them as such. But, oh! If only somebody (okay, Michael) would say I was
his
girl!

Anyway, Hank just went, “Huh?”

And then, from out of nowhere, Boris’s fist went sailing into Hank’s face.
Pow!

Only it didn’t really sound like pow. It sounded more like a thud. There was a sickening crunch of bones splintering. All of us girls gasped, thinking that Boris had marred Hank’s perfect cover-guy face.

But we needn’t have worried: It was Boris’s hand that made the crunching sound, not Hank’s face. Hank escaped completely unscathed. Boris is the one who has to have his knuckles splinted.

And you know what that means:

No more Mahler.

Whoopee!!!

It’s unprincess-like of me, however, to gloat over another’s misfortune.

I borrowed Lars’s cell phone and called the SoHo Grand between lunch and fifth period. I mean, I figured someone should let Mamaw and Papaw know that Hank was all right. Well, a Ford model, but all right.

Mamaw must have been sitting by the phone, since she picked up on the first ring.

“Clarisse?” she said. “I still haven’t heard from them.”

Which is weird. Because Clarisse is Grandmère’s name.

“Mamaw?” I said. “It’s me, Mia.”

“Oh,
Mia
.” Mamaw laughed a little. “I’m sorry, honey. I thought you were the princess. I mean, the dowager princess. Your other grandma.”

I went, “Uh, yeah. Well, it’s not. It’s me. And I’m just calling to tell you that I heard from Hank.”

Mamaw shrieked so loud, I had to hold the cell phone away from my ear.

“WHERE IS HE?” she yelled. “YOU TELL HIM FROM ME THAT WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON HIM, HE’S—”

“Mamaw,” I cried. It was kind of embarrassing, because all sorts of people in the hallway heard her yelling and were looking at me. I tried to make myself inconspicuous by hunching behind Lars.

“Mamaw,” I said, “he got a contract with Ford Models, Inc. He’s the newest Calvin Klein underwear model. He’s going to be a big celebrity, like—”

“UNDERWEAR?” Mamaw yelled. “Mia, you tell that boy to call me RIGHT NOW.”

“Well, I can’t really do that, Mamaw,” I said. “On account of the fact that—”

“RIGHT NOW,” Mamaw repeated, “or he’s in BIG TROUBLE.”

“Um,” I said. The bell was ringing anyway. “Okay, Mamaw. Is, um, the, uh, wedding still on?”

“The WHAT?”

“The wedding,” I said, wishing I could, just for once, be a normal girl who did not have to go around asking people if the royal marriage of her pregnant mother and her Algebra teacher was still on.

“Well, of course it’s still on,” Mamaw said. “What do you think?”

“Oh,” I said. “You, um, talked to my mom?”

“Of course I did,” Mamaw said. “Everything is all set.”

“Really?” I was immensely surprised. I could not picture my mother going along with this thing. Not in a million years. “And she said she’d be there?”

“Well, of course she’ll be there,” Mamaw said. “It’s her wedding, isn’t it?”

Well . . . sort of, I guess. I didn’t say that to Mamaw, though. I said, “Sure.” And then I hung up, feeling crushed.

For entirely selfish reasons, too, I confess. I was a little bit sad for my mom, I guess, since she really had tried to put up a resistance against Grandmère. I mean, she really had tried. It wasn’t her fault, of course, that she’d been going up against such a inexorable force.

But mostly I felt sad for myself. I would NEVER escape in time for
Rocky Horror
. Never, never,
never
. I mean, I know the movie doesn’t even start until midnight, but wedding receptions last way longer than that.

And who knows if Michael will ever ask me out again? I mean, not once today has he acknowledged that he is, in fact, Jo-C-rox, nor has he mentioned
Rocky Horror
. Not once. Not even so much as a reference to Rachel Leigh Cook.

And we talked at length during G and T. AT LENGTH. That is on account of how some of us who saw last year’s groundbreaking episode of
Lilly Tells It Like It Is
were understandably confused by Lilly’s helping Hank to realize his dream of supermodel stardom. The segment was titled “Yes, You as an Individual
Can
Bring Down the Sexist, Racist, Ageist, and Sizeist Modeling Industry” (by “criticizing ads that demean women and limit our ideas of beauty” and “finding ways to make your protest known to the companies advertised” and “letting the media know you want to see more varied and realistic images of women.” Also, Lilly urged us to “challenge men who judge, choose, and discard women on the basis of appearance”).

The following exchange took place during Gifted and Talented (Mrs. Hill has returned to the teachers’ lounge—permanently, one can only hope) and included Michael Moscovitz, who, as you will see, did NOT ONCE mention Jo-C-rox or
Rocky Horror
:

Me: Lilly, I thought you found the modeling industry as a whole sexist and racist and belittling to the human race.

Lilly: So? What’s your point?

Me: Well, according to Hank, you helped him realize his dream of becoming a you know what. A model.

Lilly: Mia, when I recognize a human soul crying out for self-actualization, I am powerless to stop myself. I must do what I can to see that that person’s dream is realized.

[Gee, I haven’t noticed Lilly doing all that much to help me realize
my
dream of French-kissing her brother. But on the other hand, I have not exactly made that dream known to her.]