Princess on the Brink (2 page)

I can’t believe Tina thinks Lilly and J.P. Did It over the summer. That is just ridiculous. Lilly would TOTALLY have told me if she had given away her Precious Gift.

Wouldn’t she?

Besides, J.P. still hasn’t even said the L word to her. Would Lilly really have sex for the first time with someone who hasn’t even admitted he loves her? I mean, she’s told him she loves him, like, nine million times, and all he ever says is
Thank you.
Or sometimes
I know.

But Lilly thinks that’s just his way of paying homage to Han Solo.

It’s pretty obvious J.P. has intimacy issues. I mean, he and Lilly have been going out for six months now. And he still doesn’t even refer to her as his girlfriend. He just calls her Moscovitz.

Michael used to call me Thermopolis. But that was BEFORE we started going out.

Would Lilly have sex with someone who calls her Moscovitz and introduces her to people as his “friend,” and not his “girlfriend”?

No way. Not Lilly.

Although she
did
go blond. She SAYS it’s because one of the producers who optioned her TV show told her that having light hair around her face makes her features look less irregular.

But it’s no secret that J.P. likes blondes. I mean, Keira Knightley is, like, his dream girl. He’s the only guy I know who sat through
Pride & Prejudice
as many times as Lilly
and Tina and I did. I thought it was just because he admired the screen adaptation, but later he even admitted it was because he admired a certain tall, skinny blonde (which is weird because Keira wasn’t even blond in that movie).

Poor Lilly. She can lose weight and dye her hair, but she’ll never STRETCH. At least, not to be five-seven, like Keira.

Hey, I wonder if THAT’s what Michael wants to talk to me about tonight at dinner…that he found out Lilly and J.P. Did It!

God, that BETTER not be it. If Lilly Did It and she told Michael, I will never freaking hear the end of it.

Oh, great. We’re supposed to
décrire un soir amusant avec les amis
in 200 words.

Un autre soir palpitant, et mes camarades et moi nous nous sommes installés devant la télé. Les choix ont paru interminable, les chaines, san fin. Avec le cable, n’impote quoi a été possible. Et qu’est-ce que nous avons vu? La chaine des nouvelles? La chaine des sports? La chaine des “rock-videos”? Non—la chaine douze. Oui! La chaine religieuse et ridicule—

61 words. 139 to go.

I passed Lana in the hallway on the way to this class. She hasn’t changed a bit over summer break, except, if possible, to get snottier.

Oh, and she seems to have acquired a tiny clone, some Lana Wannabe who looks exactly like her, but is just a little shorter.

Anyway, as I went by, Lana looked at my head, elbowed her clone, and started laughing.

“Look, it’s Peter Pan!” she yelled, for everyone in the hallway to hear.

It’s good to know that, however Lana spent her summer, she managed to retain the charm and wit she is so widely known for throughout Albert Einstein High.

Do I really look like Peter Pan with this haircut?

Est-ce que je vraiment ressemble Peter Pan dans cette coupe de cheveux?

TOTALLY grabbed Lilly by the taco bar and asked her if she and J.P. Did It over the summer.

Her very unsatisfactory answer: “Do you really think if I did I’d tell YOU, Bigmouth Bass?”

I have to admit, this hurt. I have faithfully kept every secret she ever told me. I never told about the time she snuck her mother’s copy of
The Happy Hooker
out of the apartment and brought it to school in the fifth grade, and read the sex parts out loud to us at recess, did I?

And what about that time she told Norman, her stalker, that if he got her tickets to see
Avenue Q
she’d send him her Steve Madden platform flip-flops, and Norman got her the tickets but she never sent him the shoes, because she’s never even owned a pair of Steve Madden platform flip-flops?

And I never told anyone how Lilly threw my Strawberry Shortcake doll on the roof of her parents’ country house and I never saw it again until the next summer when Michael was cleaning out the gutters and he threw it down into the yard and poor Strawberry’s eyes had been chewed out by squirrels and her hair was all moldy and her face had been melted by the sun into a silent scream. Even though the sight of it emotionally scarred me for life. I really loved that doll.

But I didn’t want Lilly to see how much her comment hurt me, so I just shrugged and said, “Whatever. I know you touched Boris you-know-where. He told Tina.”

But Lilly, instead of gagging, as would have been the
proper response, just looked up at the ceiling and said, “You are so juvenile.”

“Seriously, Lilly.” I couldn’t help but let a little of the hurt I felt creep into my voice. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“Because it was no big deal,” Lilly said.

“No big deal? You TOUCHED one.”

“Do we really have to discuss this in the middle of the caf?” Lilly wanted to know.

“Well, where else are we going to discuss it? Back at the lunch table, in front of your BOYFRIEND?”

“All right,” Lilly said, turning back to the taco bar. “So I touched one. What do you want to know about it?”

I couldn’t believe we were having this discussion over vats of sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese. But it was Lilly’s fault. She couldn’t have brought it up at one of our slumber parties, like a normal girl. Oh, no, not Lilly. She had to keep it this giant secret, until BORIS, of all people, spilled the beans.

The thing is, even though it was totally embarrassing and sort of gross and all…I really wanted to know.

I know. It’s sick. But I did.

“Well,” I said. Fortunately there was no one else around, as everyone seemed to be going for the stir fry. “For starters, what did it feel like?”

Lilly just shrugged. “Skin.”

I stared at her. “That’s all? Just…
skin
?”

“Um, that’s what it’s made out of,” Lilly said. “What would you expect it to feel like?”

“I don’t know,” I said. It’s kind of hard to judge these things through layers of denim. Especially button-fly. That is a lot of rivets. “In Tina’s romance novels, they always say it feels like molten satin over a steel rod of desire.”

Lilly considered this. Then she shrugged again and went, “Well, yeah. That, too.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m officially going to throw up.”

“Well, don’t do it in the guacamole. Will you go away now?”

“No,” I said. “What does Michael want to talk to me about at Number One Noodle Son?”

“Probably,” Lilly said, “that he wants you to Touch It.”

When I lifted the serving spoon from the sour cream and aimed it at her, she shrieked and said, laughing, “Seriously, I don’t know. I’ve barely seen him this summer, he’s been so busy with his stupid electrical engineering project.”

So I put the spoon down. I knew she was telling the truth. Michael had been busy with his Advanced Topics in Control Theory course, which he explained to me, when I asked what the heck that meant, was all about robots. His final project for the class had been a robotic arm that could be used to help perform closed-chest, beating heart surgery, “the ultimate goal,” Michael had said, “in the robotic surgery field.”

Yes. I have a boyfriend who builds robots. It’s SO COOL!!!!!

When Lilly and I got back to the table, it was really hard for me even to look at Boris’s face—although it’s actually
semi-attractive now that he no longer wears a bionater and started seeing a dermatologist and got Lasik eye surgery and all of that.

Still. All I can see when I look at him now is Lilly’s hand down his pants. Right there with his sweater.

“Oh my God, Mia,” Ling Su cried as I sat down. “What happened to your hair?”

This is really not the kind of thing you want to hear when you’ve just gotten your hair cut.

“Astor Place Hairstylists,” I said. “Why? You don’t like it?”

“Oh, no, I like it,” Ling Su said quickly. But I totally saw her exchange looks with Perin, whom, I might add, has even shorter hair than I do. And mine’s pretty short.

“I think Mia looks great,” J.P. said. He was sitting down at the other end of the table, across from Lilly. He wasn’t looking too bad himself, actually. His tousled blond hair had been streaked even blonder in places by the sun—his parents have a place on Martha’s Vineyard, which is where he’d spent the bulk of his summer, brushing up on his windsurfing skills.

And it had totally paid off. I mean, if a killer tan and pretty well-defined arm muscles count for anything.

Not that I was looking. Because I already have a boyfriend with his own killer arm muscles.

And okay, Michael probably didn’t get tan this summer, because he was too busy with his summer school robot project.

But he’s still hotter than J.P.

Who, besides, is Lilly’s boyfriend.

Or something.

“Very gaminesque,” J.P. said, nodding at my head.

“I know what that means,” Tina said excitedly. “Like Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
!”

“I was thinking more Keira Knightley in
Domino
,” J.P. said. “But that works, too.”

It’s nice to have such supportive friends.

Well, SOME supportive friends, anyway. I can’t believe Lilly won’t tell me if she and J.P. Did It. If they did, you can’t tell by looking at them. You’d think if they’d given each other their Precious Gift, there’d at least be some footsies under the table.

But the only thing I saw them do that was at all intimate was J.P. giving Lilly a bite of his Yodel. And
I’ve
given her bites of my Yodel.

But that doesn’t mean I’m about to give her my Precious Gift.

Okay, it really isn’t fair that, besides the whole being-putin-Intro-to-Creative-Writing-and-not-Intermediate-Creative-Writing-thing, I should also have such a sucky afternoon schedule. Look at this. Just LOOK:

Physical education, then CHEMISTRY, then PRECALCULUS??? Is it too much to ask that I have ONE FUN CLASS in the afternoon? ONE THING TO LOOK FORWARD TO???

But no. It has to be SUCKZONE from 1:25 p.m. on.

Seriously. That is just wrong.

And who do they think they’re kidding, putting me in advanced algebra? ME?

Whatever. Considering how bad my practice PSAT math score was, maybe I can talk Dad out of making me go to princess lessons this year, and have mandatory tutoring instead.

AND MICHAEL COULD BE MY TUTOR!!!!

Hey, it could happen. He tutored me all through Algebra and Geometry. And I passed both of those. Why shouldn’t Dad also hire him to be my tutor for Precalculus?

And maybe he could tutor me in Chemistry, too. Because I heard that class is no joke.

Oh, great. Lilly wants to talk about the student election. She says she’s going to nominate me at Assembly today.

Seriously. I just don’t know. I mean, she’s got our platform all set up and everything. All I have to do is run.

But I barely had a minute to myself last year! And if I really want to be a novelist—or a screenwriter, or even a SHORT STORY writer, or whatever—I HAVE to have some time to myself in order to ACTUALLY WRITE SOMETHING. I mean, besides my journal and
Battlestar Galactica
fan fics.

And then there’s Michael. I barely got to see him last year, we were both so busy with school. On top of which I also had princess stuff to do, not to mention a new baby brother. Something’s got to give this year.

And I’m thinking it’s going to be student government.

Why can’t LILLY run for president? I mean, I know she thinks everybody hates her, but that’s just not true. I’m sure they’ve all forgotten about how she tried to convince the trustees to make the day an extra period longer so we could squeeze in a mandatory Latin class.

How am I going to break it to her that I don’t want to run, though? Especially when she’s already gotten seventy-five
Vote for Mia
T-shirts printed up, and is looking into
leasing the school roof to cell tower distributors and using the extra income to provide free laptops to the school’s scholarship students?

Man. Being responsible blows.

Wow. Kenny Showalter is in this class. Is it impossible for me to take a science class in this school and NOT have Kenny Showalter be in it?

Apparently so.

Somehow he got even TALLER over the summer. He’s as tall as Lars now.

Unfortunately for him, however, I think he still weighs less than I do.

He just sat down next to me. I wonder if he’ll want to be lab partners again. This wouldn’t be the worst thing, since if he hadn’t been lab partners with me last year in Earth Science, I’d have flunked. Or at least gotten much worse than a C.

Hey! J.P. just walked in. J.P. is in this class, too!

Thank God. At least there’s ONE normal person I can ask what’s going on. I mean, Kenny is great and all, but, you know. There’s always that TENSION between us, because of his dumping me for thinking I was in love with Boris Pelkowski. God, that was so long ago! You’d think we’d both be over that by now, but it’s still there, this little bit of tension between us when he’s doing my homework for me.

I just waved for J.P. to sit on my other side, which he very nicely did. God, he is so great. I’m SO glad Lilly is going out with him. I have to admit, I didn’t have much faith in her taste in guys for a while there, what with Jangbu and Franco and all. But she’s really redeemed herself with—

Whoa. Kenny just passed me a note.

Mia—I didn’t know you were taking Chemistry this year. Want to be lab partners again? Why break with tradition?

WHY WOULD KENNY WANT TO BE LAB PARTNERS WITH ME???? I mean, except that I have better handwriting than he does, I can see no possible advantage for him in being lab partners with me. It’s true, he doesn’t know how bad my math practice PSAT score was.

But he KNOWS I suck in science. I can only bring our group effort down!

Oh, wait. Now J.P. just passed me a note.

Hey, Mia. I didn’t know you had Chem with Hipskin this semester. He’s supposed to be good. Want to be lab partners? I suppose that’s what Showalter just asked you in that note he flipped over to you. Ditch him, he’ll just hold you back with his constant protestations of
l’amour
.
I’m the one you want.

Which is funny, but—oh, dear. What do I do? I WANT to be lab partners with J.P., because I really like J.P. He is very amusing and, besides which, gets straight As—except for in Honors English last year, since he ALSO had Ms. Martinez (only for a different class period than mine) and she gave him a B same as me because—we decided—she just didn’t like our writing style.

But Kenny asked first. And Kenny and I are ALWAYS partners. He’s right, we can’t break with tradition.

WHY DO THESE THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME????

Wait, I can figure this out. I mean, I haven’t had TWO YEARS of instruction in diplomacy for nothing.

I know…let’s all THREE be lab partners. Okay?—Mia

To which Kenny replied:

Cool! I like your new haircut, by the way. You look just like Anakin Skywalker from
The Phantom Menace
. You know, the one where he pod races?

Great. I look like a nine-year-old boy.

J.P. just wrote:

Skillfully done, grasshopper. I see your sensei has taught you well.

Sensei! That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone refer to my grandmother as THAT.

Would she be offended if she knew?

Are you kidding? I can totally see her in one of those karate uniforms, with a big stick, telling me that “some
lessons can’t be taught. They must be lived to be understood.”

À la Terence Stamp in
Elektra
.
Nice. Only it’s called a gi.

What is?

A karate uniform. Don’t you know the ways of the fighting arts?

Sorry. But I know how to pour a formal tea.

Well, obviously you’re set for life then.

Hee. It’s fun talking to J.P. It’s like talking to a girl, only better, because he’s a guy. But there’s no sexual tension because I know he likes Lilly.

This might actually turn out not to be so bad. I mean, except for the whole Chemistry part.

Pure substance—constant composition

Element—composed of single atom

Compound—2 or more elements in a specific ratio

Mixture—combinations of pure substances

Only six hours until I get to see Michael. Please, God, don’t let me die of boredom before then.