At the end of the ad, some curlicue script came on that said, “Preserve Genovia’s historic wonder. Vote for Prince Phillipe.”

By the time the music—which I recognized as a ballad Michael had written, way back in his Skinner Box days—had ended, I was almost in tears.

“Oh my God, you guys,” I said. “You have to see this.”

And then I passed around my cell phone and showed them all. Soon the whole table was almost in tears. Well, except J.P., who hadn’t come back yet, and Boris, who is immune to emotion unless it involves Tina.

“Why would she do that?” Tina wanted to know.

“She used to be cool,” Shameeka said. “Remember? Then something happened.”

“I have to find her,” I said, still blinking back tears.

“Find who?” J.P. asked. He’d finally returned from his Sean Penn call.

“Lilly,” I said. “Look what she did.” I handed him my cell phone so he could watch the commercial she’d made. He did, a frown on his face.

“Well,” he said, when it was over. “That was…nice.”

“Nice? It’s amazing,” I said. “I have to thank her.”

“I really don’t think you do,” J.P. said. “She owes you. After that website she made up about you. Remember?”

“That was a long time ago,” I said.

“Yeah,” J.P. said. “Even so. I’d watch out, if I were you. She’s still a Moscovitz.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. J.P. shrugged. “Well, you of all people should know, Mia. You have to imagine Lilly wants something in return for her apparent generosity. Michael always did, didn’t he?”

I stared at him in complete shock.

On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Hewas talking about Michael, the boy who’d broken my heart into so many little pieces…pieces J.P. had so kindly helped put back together again.

Before I had a chance to say anything, though, Boris said, from absolutely nowhere, “Funny, I hadn’t noticed that. Michael’s letting me live with him next semester for absolutely nothing.”

This caused all of us to swivel our heads around to stare at him as if he were a parking meter that had suddenly magically begun speaking.

Tina was the first one of us to recover.

“WHAT?” she demanded of her boyfriend. “You’re living withMichael Moscovitz next semester?”

“Yeah,” Boris said, looking surprised she didn’t know it. “I didn’t hand in my housing registration to Juilliard on time, and they ran out of singles. And I’m not going to live with a ROOMMATE. So Michael said I could crash in his spare bedroom until a single opens up for me on the waiting list. He’s got a kick-ass loft, you know, on Spring Street. It’s huge. He won’t even know I’m there.”

I glanced at Tina. Her eyes were bigger than I’d ever seen them. I wasn’t sure if it was with rage or bewilderment.

“So all this time,” Tina said, “you’ve secretly gone on being friends with Michael behind Mia’s back? And you never told me?”

“There’s nothing secret about it,” Boris said, looking offended. “Michael and I’ve always been friends, since I was in his band. It has nothing to do with Mia. You don’t stop being friends with a guy just because he’s broken up with his girlfriend. And there’s lots of stuff I don’t tell you about.Guy stuff. And you shouldn’t be stressing me out today, I have my concert tonight, I’m supposed to be taking it easy—”

“Guy stuff?” Tina said, picking up her purse. “You don’t have to tell me aboutguy stuff ? Fine. You want to take it easy? You don’t want to be stressed? No problem. Why don’t I just relieveall your stress? By leaving.”

“Tee,” Boris said, rolling his eyes.

But when she stormed from the caf in a huff, he realized she was serious. And he had to hurry to chase after her.

“Those two,” J.P. said, with a chuckle, when they were gone.

“Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t chuckling, though. I was remembering something that had happened nearly two years ago, when Boris had come up to me and urged me to write back to Michael, when he kept writing to me, but I didn’t trust myself to write back. I’d wondered then how Boris even knew Michael had been writing to me. I thought it was because Tina had told him.

Now I wondered if I’d been wrong. MaybeMichael had told him. Because the two of them had been in communication.

Aboutme.

What if Boris, scraping away on his violin in the supply closet while the two of us were in Gifted and Talented together, had been spying on me for Michael the whole time?

And now Michael’s giving him free room and board in his fancy SoHo loft to pay him back!

Or am I reading too much into this—as usual?

And I don’t think that’s true, what J.P. said, about the Moscovitzes always wanting something in return. I mean, yes, Michael wanted to have sex back when we were dating (if that’s what he was implying…and I think it was).

But the truth is, so did I. Maybe I wasn’t as ready for it emotionally then as I am now. But we couldn’t exactly help being attracted to each other.

And now I finally realize why!

This is all just so confusing. Honestly,what is going on? Why did Lilly make that commercial for Dad? Why did Michael donate the CardioArm?

Why is everyone in the Moscovitz family being so nice to me all of a sudden?

 

Thursday, May 4, 2 p.m., the hallway

I’m cleaning out my locker.

Tomorrow is Senior Skip Day (although technically not an officially school-sanctioned holiday), and I’m done with finals, so this is basically the only time I’m going to be able to do this—also the last time I’ll be inside this hellhole (aside from graduation, which will be in Central Park, unless it rains).

It’s really sad, in a way.

I guess this place wasn’t really a hellhole. Or at least, it wasn’t always. I had some good times here. At least a few. I’m throwing away tons of old notes from Lilly and Tina (remember when we used to write notes, before we got cell phones, and started texting?) and a lot of things that are stuck together that I can’t identify (seriously, I wish I had cleaned this thing out once or twice before in the past four years. Also, I think a mouse has been in here).

Here’s a flattened Whitman’s Sampler (empty) someone once gave me. I seem to have eaten everything that was inside it. And here’s a smushed flower of some kind that I’m sure had some kind of significance at some point but now it’s kind of moldy. Why can’t I take better care of my things? I should have pressed it neatly between the pages of a book the way Grandmère taught me, and noted what kind of flower it was and who gave it to me so I could always treasure its memory.

What’s wrong with me? Why did I jam it in my locker like that? Now it’s rotten and I have no choice but to stuff it in this trash bag Mr. Kreblutz the head custodian has given me.

I’m a terrible person. Not just because I don’t take better care of my belongings, but because…well, all the other reasons, which should be obvious by now.

What am I going to do? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

I looked all over for Lilly, but I couldn’t find her. I suppose she has finals this afternoon.

(I did find Tina and Boris, though. They made up. At least if the fact that they were making out in the third-floor stairwell means anything. I snuck discreetly away before they noticed me.)

I guess I could call her (Lilly, I mean). But…I don’t know what I’d say. Thank you? That seems so lame.

What I want to say is…why?Why are you being so nice to me?

Maybe I’ll ask her brother at lunch tomorrow. I mean, if he knows. After I warn him about my cold. And to stay far away from me.

Anyway.

It feels so weird to be wandering around the halls of this place while everyone else is in class. Principal Gupta totally saw me, too, but she didn’t say anything like, “Why aren’t you in class, Mia? Do you have a pass?” She was just like, “Oh, hello, Mia,” and kept walking by, all distracted. Clearly, she was worrying about graduation (So am I—WHAT COLLEGE AM I GOING TO CHOOSE???) or whatever, and had more pressing matters on her mind than why a princess was roaming around in the halls of her school.

Either that, or I didn’t look like much of a threat. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a graduating senior.

With a bodyguard in tow.

Maybe someday I’ll write a book about this. A senior girl, experiencing conflicting emotions as she cleans out her locker, saying good-bye to the place of higher education she’s known so long…her love/hate relationship with it…She wants to leave it, and yet…she’s afraid to leave it, to spread her wings and start anew somewhere else. She hates the long, gray, smelly hallways, and yet…she loves them, too. I mean, in a way.

Einstein Lions, we’re for you

Come on, be bold, come on, be bold,

come on, be bold

Einstein Lions, we’re for you

Blue and gold, blue and gold,

blue and gold

Einstein Lions, we’re for you

We’ve got a team no one else can ever tame

Einstein Lions, we’re for you

Let’s win this game!

Good-bye, AEHS. You suck. I hate you.

And yet…somehow I’ll miss you, too.

 

Thursday, May 4, 6 p.m., the loft

Dear Ms. Delacroix,

Enclosed please find your manuscript, which we are sorry to say we do not believe is the right fit for us at this time. We wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Heartland Romance Publications

I had to hide the above from J.P., who’s here right now. He came over after school today. It’s the first time in months he didn’t have play rehearsal or I didn’t have princess lessons or one of us didn’t have therapy.

So. He came over.

He’s out in the living room right now, talking to Mom and Mr. G about his movie deal. I’m “changing for Boris’s concert.”

But, obviously I’m not. I’m writing about what happened when he came over instead. Which is that I totally tried VERY VERY HARD to get my MHCs to respond to his. I did this by doing what Tina did, when she saw Boris in his swimsuit.

Yes. I jumped his bones.

Or I tried to, anyway. I just figured, if I could get J.P. to kiss me—reallykiss me, the way Michael used to, when we were having a heavy-duty make-out session in his dorm room—maybe everything would be all right. Maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about pretending I have a cold tomorrow when I have lunch with Michael. Maybe I won’t be so super attracted to him anymore.

But it didn’t work.

Not that J.P. pushed me away, or anything. He kissed me back, and stuff. He tried. He really did try.

But he kept stopping every thirty seconds or so to talk about his movie deal.

I’m not even joking.

Like about how “Sean” had asked him to write the screenplay. (I guess a screenplay isn’t the same as writing a play. J.P. has to rewrite the whole thing from scratch now, in a different computer program.)

And how J.P. is seriously considering moving out “to the Coast” so he can be there for the filming.

He’s even debating putting school off for a year so he can work on the movie. Because you can go to school any time.

But you can only be one of the hottest young screenwriters in Hollywood once.

Anyway, he asked me to come with him. Out to Hollywood.

This completely killed the mood. The making out mood, I mean.

I guess some girls would love it if their boyfriend, who’d written a play about them that was soon to become a major motion picture directed by Sean Penn, asked them to defer college for a year and move out to Hollywood with them.

But I, being the ultimate loser that I am, just blurted out, “Why would I dothat ?” before I could really stop myself. Mostly because I didn’t really have my mind in the conversation. I was thinking about…well, not Hollywood film deals.

Also because I’m a horrible person, for the most part.

“Well, because you love me,” J.P. was forced to remind me. We were lying on my bed, with Fat Louie glaring balefully at us from the windowsill. Fat Louie hates it when anyone but me lies on my bed. “And you want to support me.”

I flushed, feeling guilty for my outburst.

“No,” I said. “I mean, what wouldI do out in Hollywood?”

“Write,” J.P. said. “Maybe not romance novels, because frankly, I think you’re capable of much more important work—”

“You haven’t even read my book,” I reminded him, feeling hurt. We’d still never gotten to have our Stephen and Tabitha King editorial talk. And important work? Romance novels are important! To the people who like to read them, anyway.