Worse, she is WAY excited that Michael and I broke up.
“I always knew That Boy was trouble,” she said, all happily, when I explained what I was doing, showing up at her suite in the midafternoon, supposedly infected with a highly contagious disease.I’m not sick, Grandmère , I’d said.I’m just sad.
Because, the problem is, I haven’t stopped loving Michael. So instead of agreeing with her that he was trouble, I was just like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and went and sat on her couch, pulling Rommel onto my lap for comfort.
Yes. That’s how far gone I was. I was looking to ROMMEL, a toy poodle, for comfort.
“Oh, there’s nothing inherently WRONG with Michael,” Grandmère went on. “Except that he’s a commoner. Well, tell me. What did he do? It must have been something particularly heinous for you to have taken off That Necklace.”
My hand went to the empty spot at my throat. My necklace! I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been missing it—how strange it felt not to have it on—until just then. Michael’s necklace had been a bit of a bone of contention between Grandmère and me. She always wanted me to put on the Genovian royal jewels for balls and functions I attended, but I would never take Michael’s necklace off, and let’s just say Grandmère isn’t a fan of the layered necklace look.
Well, I guess a silver snowflake on a chain doesn’t exactly go with a diamond-and-sapphire choker.
I figured there was no point in hiding the truth from Grandmère, since she’d weasel it out of me somehow. So I went, “He slept with Judith Gershner.”
Grandmère looked delighted. Well, she WOULD.
“Cheated on you! Well, never mind. Plenty of fish in the sea. What about that nice boy who was in my play, the Reynolds-Abernathy boy? He’d make a lovely consort for you. Such a nice young man. So tall and blond and handsome!”
I just ignored that. What could I have said in reply? Sometimes I wonder if lunacy runs in the family.
Actually, I KNOW it does.
Instead, I said, “Michael didn’t cheat on me. He slept with Judith Gershner before we started going out.”
“Is she that horse fly girl?” Grandmère wanted to know. “I can see why you’d be upset about that. Those horrible black tennis shoes!”
“Grandmère.” Seriously. What is WRONG with her? “It’s not about how she LOOKS. It’s that Michael LIED to me about it. I asked him if they were going out, and he said no. Plus, he didn’t even LOVE her. What kind of person gives his Precious Gift to someone he doesn’t even LOVE?”
Grandmère just looked at me. She seemed confused. “His precious what?”
“GIFT.” God, she can be so dense. “HIS PRECIOUS GIFT. You only have ONE. And he gave his to JUDITH GERSHNER, a girl he didn’t even CARE about. He should have waited. He should have given it to ME.”
I didn’t mention the part about how he’d just caught me kissing another boy. Because it didn’t really seem to pertain to the matter at hand.
Grandmère just looked more confused. “Was this gift some kind of family heirloom? Because the rules of etiquette dictate that when a young man gives you a family heirloom, it is only yours to keep for the duration of the relationship, and must be returned in the event of the dissolution of the engagement.”
“His Precious Gift isn’t a RING, Grandmère,” I said, fighting for patience. “His Precious Gift is his VIRGINITY.”
Grandmère blinked at me. “Hisvirginity ? Virginity is no GIFT. You can’t even WEAR it!”
“Grandmère,” I said. I can’t believe she is so behind the times. Well, it’s not surprising she has no idea what I’m talking about. I was listening to “Dance, Dance” on my iPod the other day and she overheard it and said it was “catchy” and asked who sang it and when I said Fall Out Boy, she accused me of lying and said no one would name a band something that stupid. I tried to explain that the name came from Bart on the showThe Simpsons , and she was just like, “BART WHO? Do you mean WALLIS SIMPSON? She didn’t have a relative named Bart. That I know of.”
See? She’s hopeless.
“Your virginity is a Precious Gift you are supposed to give only to a person whom you love,” I explained slowly, so she’d understand. “Only Michael gave his to Judith Gershner, a girl he didn’t love and with whom, in fact, he says he was only ‘messing around.’ So now he has no gift to give me, the girl he professes to love, because he SQUANDERED his gift on someone he didn’t even care about.”
Grandmère shook her head. “That Miss Gershner did you a FAVOR, young lady. You should be kissing her feet. No woman wants an inexperienced lover. Well, except apparently all these young blond female teachers I keep seeing on the news, who are sleeping with their fourteen-year-old male students. But I must say, they all appear to be mentally unhinged to me. What on earth do they TALK to these young boys about? Because it certainly isn’t why their trousers are falling down. Tell me, Amelia, why IS that considered so fashionable? What is so appealing about a young man whose pants are halfway down to his knees?”
I could think of no reply to this. Because what can you even SAY to that?
“In any case,” Grandmère went on, not even noticing I hadn’t said anything, “isn’t That Boy moving to Japan anyway?”
“Yes,” I said. And as usual, my heart twisted at the sound of the wordJapan . Just proving that:
a) I still have a heart, and
b) I still love Michael, despite all my efforts not to. I mean, how could I not?
“Well, what does it matter, then?” Grandmère asked cheerfully. “You’ll probably never see him again.”
That’s when I burst into tears.
Grandmère was pretty alarmed at this development. I mean, I was just sitting there, wailing. Even Rommel put his ears back and started whining. I don’t know what would have happened if my dad hadn’t walked in just then.
“Mia!” he said when he saw me. “What are you doing here so early? And what’s the matter? Why on earth are you crying?”
But I just shook my head. On account of how I couldn’t stop crying.
“She broke up with That Boy,” Grandmère had to shout, in order to be heard over my sobs. “I don’t know what she’s carrying on that way for. I told her it’s all for the best. She’d be much better off with the Abernathy-Reynolds boy. Such a tall, handsome young man! And his father’s so rich!”
This just made me cry harder, remembering how I’d kissed J.P. in the hallway, right in front of Michael. I hadn’t meant to, of course—but what did that matter? The damage was done. Michael was never going to speak to me again. I just knew it.
The fact that I so desperately wanted him to, in spite of everything that had happened between us, was what was making me cry hardest of all.
“I think I know what she needs,” Grandmère went on, as I continued to wail.
“Her mother?” Dad asked hopefully.
Grandmère shook her head. “Bourbon. Does the trick every time.”
Dad frowned. “I think not. But you might have your maid ring for some hot tea. Maybe that will help.”
Grandmère didn’t look very hopeful, but she went off to get Jeanne to ring for tea, while Dad stood there, looking down at me. My dad’s not really used to seeing me cry like that. I mean, I’ve cried in front of him plenty of times—most recently over the summer when we were at a state function at the palace and I walked into a low-hanging roof beam while wearing my tiara and the combs dug into my head like tiny knives.
But he is not used to me having dramatic emotional outbursts, because for the most part over the past few years, with a few notable exceptions, things have been going fairly well, and I have been able to keep it together.
Until now.
I just kept on bawling, and reaching for tissues from the box on the end table by the couch. In between wails, it all kind of poured out, about the Precious Gift and Judith Gershner and the snowflake necklace and how Michael had come to school to see me and instead saw me kissing J.P.