“Oh, Michael,” Lilly said, disgustedly. “Grow up. It was just a common garden vegetable.”
“I’m serious.” Michael looked mad. “If anyone saw Mia do that just now, she could be arrested.”
“No, she couldn’t,” Lilly said. “She’s a minor.”
“She could still go to juvenile court. You’d better not be planning on airing that footage on your show,” Michael said.
Oh, my God, Michael was defending my honor! Or at least trying to make sure I didn’t end up in juvenile court. It was just so sweet. So . . .well, Jo-C-rox of him.
Lilly went, “I most certainly am.”
“Well, you’d better edit out the parts that show Mia’s face.”
Lilly stuck her chin out. “No way.”
“Lilly, everybody knows who Mia is. If you air that segment, it will be all over the news that the princess of Genovia was caught on tape dropping projectiles out the window of her friend’s high-rise apartment. Get a clue, will you?”
Michael had let go of my waist, I noticed, with regret.
“Lilly, Michael’s right,” Tina Hakim Baba said. “We better edit that part out. Mia doesn’t need any more publicity than she has already.”
And Tina didn’t evenknow about theTwentyFour/Seven thing.
Lilly got up and stomped back toward the window. She started to lean out—checking, I guess, to see whether the doorman and the owner of the Jaguar were still there—
but Michael jerked her back.
“Rule Number One,” he said. “If you insist on dropping something out the window, never, ever check to see if anybody is standing down there, looking up. They will see you look out and figure out what apartment you are in. Then you will be blamed for dropping whatever it was. Because no one but the guilty party would be looking out the window under such circumstances.”
“Wow, Michael,” Shameeka said admiringly. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
Not only that. He sounded like Dirty Harry.
Which was just how I felt when I dropped that eggplant out the window. Like Dirty Harry.
And it had felt good—but not quite so good as having Michael rush to my defense like that.
Michael said, “Let’s just say I used to have a very keen interest in experimenting with the earth’s gravitational pull.”
Wow. There is so much I don’t know about Lilly’s brother. Like he used to be a juvenile delinquent!
Could a computer genius-slash-juvenile delinquent ever be interested in a flat-chested princess like myself? He did save my life tonight (well, okay: he saved me from possible community service).
It’s not a French kiss, or a slow dance, or even an admission he’s the author of that anonymous letter.
But it’s a start.
I know what yer thinkin’:
Did he fire six shots, or only five?
Frankly, in all the confusion,
I kinda lost track myself.
But you gotta ask yourself one question:
(beat)
Do I feel lucky?
(long pause)
Well?
(long pause)
Do ya, punk?
THINGS TO DO
1. English journal
2. Stop thinking about that stupid letter
3. Ditto Michael Moscovitz
4. Ditto the interview
5. Ditto Mom
6. Change cat litter
7. Drop off laundry
8. Get super to put lock on bathroom door
9. Buy: Dishwashing liquid
Q-tips
Canvas stretchers (for Mom)
That stuff you put on your fingernails that
makes them taste bad
Something nice for Mr. Gianini, to say
welcome to the family
Something nice for Dad, to say don’t worry,
someday you, too, will find true love
Sunday, October 26,7 p.m.
I was really afraid that when I got home my mom was going to be disappointed in me.
Notyell at me. My mom is really not a yelling kind of person.
But she does get disappointed in me, like when I do something stupid like not call and tell her where I am if I am out late (which, given my social life, or lack thereof, hardly ever happens).
But I did screw up this time, and big time. It was really, really hard to leave the Moscovitzes’ apartment this morning and come home, knowing the potential for disappointment that awaited me there.
Of course, it’s always hard to leave Lilly’s. Every time I go there, it’s like taking a vacation from my real life. Lilly has such a nice, normal family. Well, as normal as two psychoanalysts whose son has his own webzine and whose daughter has her own cable-access television show can be. At the Moscovitzes’, the biggest problem is always whose turn is it to walk Pavlov, their sheltie, or whether to order Chinese or Thai take-out.
At my house, the problems always seem to be a little more complicated.
But of course when I finally did work up the courage to come home, my mom was totally happy to see me. She gave me a big hug, and told me not to worry about what had
happened at the interview taping. She said Dad had talked to her, and that she completely understood. She even tried to get me to believe that it washer fault for not having said
anything to him right away.
Which I know isn’t true—it’s still my fault, me and my idiot mouth—but it was nice to hear, just the same.
So then we had a nice, fun time sitting around planning her and Mr. G’s wedding. My mom decided Halloween would be an excellent day to get married, because the idea of marriage is so scary. Since it was going to be at City Hall, that meant I’d probably have to skip school, but that was okay by me!