“Yeah.” My cheeks felt as warm as my hot chocolate. “I just—you know. I’m just coming out of a long-term relationship, and I don’t know if I’m ready to jump back into another right now.”
“I hear you,” Lana said. “That’s how I’ve felt ever since I broke up with Josh. We’re young, you know? We have to play the field. Who needs to be tied down to one guy when you’re SIXTEEN?”
“I’d like to be tied down to Skeet Ulrich,” Trisha volunteered.
“It’s just…,” I said, ignoring the Skeet Ulrich remark. Although, you know, ditto. “I really love Michael. And the idea of being with some other guy…I don’t know. It doesn’t do anything for me.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Lana said, slurping some nonfat foam from her wooden stirrer. “After Josh and I broke up, I was like, who can ever replace Josh, you know? Because he’s, like, so tall and hot and smart and good about hanging out in the boyfriend chair while I’m shopping.”
“Totally,” Trisha said, nodding in agreement, “good about that. A lot of guys aren’t. You’d be surprised.”
“So I was really reluctant, you know, to hook up with anyone,” Lana went on, “because I just didn’t want to get hurt again. But then I thought, I need to make a new start. You know? Like a do-over. So I went to a party. And that’s where I met Blaine.”
“Blaize,” Trisha corrected her.
“Was that his name?” Lana looked far away. “Oh, yeah. Well, whatever. He was, like, my rebound guy. And after that I was totally cured.”
“You need a rebound guy,” Trisha said, pointing at me with her stirrer.
“I think it should be that J.P. guy,” Lana agreed. “I mean, he let himself get set on FIRE for you.”
“Getting set on fire is so hot,” Trisha informed me. Apparently without irony.
I nodded anyway. “I know. The thing is…on paper, J.P. is the perfect guy for me. We both love the theater and movies and come from similar backgrounds and my grandmother totally loves him and we both want to be writers—”
“And you’re both always scribbling in those notebooks,” Lana said, pointing at my Mead composition notebook with a manicured nail. “Like you’re doing now. Which isn’t weird at all, by the way.”
“Yeah,” I said, ignoring Trisha’s sarcastic snort. “And I know he’s good-looking and it was cool how he saved me and all. But it’s just…he doesn’t smell right.”
I knew they were both going to stare at me funny. And they both did. They had no idea what I was talking about.
No one does. No one gets it.
Except maybe my dad.
“Just get him a different cologne,” Trisha said.
“Yeah,” Lana said. “Josh used to wear this totally gross stuff that practically gave me a migraine, so for his birthday one year I got him some Drakkar Noir and he started wearing that instead. Problem solved.”
I had to pretend like I was thankful for this tip, and that it actually helped. Even though it totally didn’t. This, it turns out, is the problem with being friends with people in the popular crowd:
You can’t always tell them the truth about stuff, because a lot of things, they just don’t understand.
Thursday, September 23, Chemistry
Mia—you were so quiet at lunch today. Are you okay?
Yes, J.P.! Fine! Just…a little overwhelmed.
Not because of me, I hope.
No! Nothing to do with you!
You can’t tell cute guys the truth about stuff, either.
You’re lying.
No! I’m not! What would make you say that?
Your nostrils are flaring.
DANG! Can NOTHING in my life remain a secret?
Oh. Lilly told you about that?
She did. Listen, the last thing I want is for things to be weird between us.
They’re not! Well, I mean…not really.
I told you—I can wait.
I know! And it’s sweet of you. Really sweet!
I’m too sweet, aren’t I? Too much of a nice guy? Girls never fall for the nice guys.
No! You’re not nice. You’re scary, remember? At least according to your therapist….
Hey, that’s right. And didn’t your doctor tell you to do something every day that scares you?
Um. Yes….
Then you should go out with me Friday night.
I can’t! I have a thing.
Mia. I thought we were going to be honest with each other.
Do you see my nostrils flaring? Seriously, I have to give a speech at this Domina Rei gala.
Fine. I’ll be your escort.
You can’t. It’s women only.
Right.
I’m serious. Believe me, I wish I weren’t.
Okay. Saturday, then.
I can’t! I really have to study. Do you have any idea how tenuously I’m hanging on to my B-plus average right now?
Fine. But sooner or later, I’m taking you out. And you’re going to forget all about Michael. I promise.
J.P., you have no idea how much I hope that’s true.
Thursday, September 23, 8 p.m., limo on the way to the Four Seasons
Okay. It’s really hard to write this because my hands are shaking so hard.
But I need to get it all down. Because something happened.
Something big.
Bigger than a nitrostarch explosion. Bigger than Lilly hating me and maybe possibly being the founder of ihatemiathermopolis.com. Bigger than J.P. turning out to love me. Bigger than Michael turning out NOT to love me (anymore). Bigger than me having to start therapy. Bigger than my mom marrying my Algebra teacher and having his baby, or me turning out to be a princess, or Michael even loving me in the first place.
Bigger than anything that’s happened to me ever.
Okay. This is what happened:
It started out like a normal enough evening. I mean, I worked with Mr. G on my homework (I will never pass either Chemistry or Precalculus without daily tutoring—that much is clear), had dinner, and finally decided, you know, that Lana’s right: I need to make a new start. I need a do-over. Seriously. It’s time to go out with the old—old boyfriends, old best friends, old clothes that don’t fit me anymore, and old décor—and in with the new.
So I was rearranging my bedroom furniture (whatever. I was done with my homework, and I DON’T HAVE A TV ANYMORE. What ELSE was I supposed to do? Look up mean things about myself on the Internet? There is now a comment section on ihatemiathermopolis.com where someone from South Dakota just posted “I hate Mia Thermopolis, too! She is so shallow and self-absorbed! I once sent her an e-mail care of the Genovian palace and she never wrote back!”) when I accidentally knocked over Princess Amelie’s portrait.
And the back fell off. You know, the wood part that was over the back of the frame?
And I totally freaked out, because, you know, that portrait is probably priceless or whatever, like everything else at the palace.
So I scrambled over to pick it up.
And this paper fell out.
Not a paper, really. Some parchment. Like the kind they used to write on, back in the 1600s.
And it was covered all over in this scrawly seventeenth-century French that was really hard to read. It took me forever to decipher what it said. I mean, I could see that at the bottom it was signed by Princess Amelie—myPrincess Amelie. And that right next to her signature was the Genovian royal seal. And that next to that were the signatures of two witnesses, whose names were not familiar to me.
It took me a minute to figure out that they had to be the signatures of the two witnesses she had found to sign off on her executive order.
That’s when I realized what I was looking at. That thing Amelie had signed—the thing her uncle had gotten so mad at her for, and burned all the copies of…except one, that she’d hidden somewhere close to her heart.
At first I’d thought she’d meant LITERALLY next to her heart, and that whatever it was, it must have been burned to a crisp along with her body in the royal funereal pyre after Amelie’s death.