Can I just say it’s very hard to get swept away in the arms of your one true love when you can hear someone yelling, “You would take this common Genovian wench to wed when you could have me, Alboin? Fie!”

Which may be why Michael just went to the kitchen to get us some more popcorn. It looks like 2001: A Space Odyssey may be our only hope for drowning out Lilly’s not-so-dulcet tones as she and Lars rehearse her lines.

Although—seeing as how I’m making this new effort to stop lying so much—I should probably admit that it’s not just Lilly’s strident rehearsing that’s keeping me from being able to give Michael my full attention, make out–wise. The truth is, this party thing is weighing down on me like that banana snake Britney wore at the VMAs that one time.

It’s killing me inside. It really is. I mean, I made the dip—French onion, you know, from the Knorr’s packet—and everything, to make him think I’m looking forward to tomorrow night and everything.

But I’m so not.

At least I have a plan, though. Thanks to Lana. About what I’m going to do during the party. I mean, the dancing thing. And I have an outfit. Well, sort of. I think I might have cut my skirt a little TOO short.

Although to Lana, there’s probably no such thing.

Oooooh, Michael’s back, with more popcorn. Kissing time!

Saturday, March 6, midnight

Close call: When I got home from the Moscovitzes’ this evening, my mom was waiting up for me (well, not exactly waiting up for ME. She was watching that three-part Extreme Surgery on Discovery Health about the guy with the enormous facial birthmark that even eight surgeries couldn’t totally get rid of. And he couldn’t even put a mask on that side of his face like the Phantom of the Opera guy, because his birthmark was all bumpy and stuck out too far for any mask to fit over. And Christine would just be all, Um, I can totally see your scars even with your mask, dude. Plus he probably didn’t have an underground grotto to take her to anyway. But whatever).

Even though I tried to sneak in all quietly, Mom caught me, and we had to have the conversation I’d really been hoping to avoid:

Mom (putting the TV on mute):

Mia, what is this I hear about your grandmother putting on some kind of musical about your ancestress Rosagunde and casting you in the lead?

Me:

Um. Yeah. About that.

Mom:

That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Doesn’t she realize you are barely passing Geometry? You don’t have time to be starring in any play. You have to concentrate on your studies. You have enough extracurricular activities, what with the president thing and princess lessons. And now this? Who does she think she’s kidding?

Me:

Musical.

Mom:

What?

Me:

It’s a musical, not a play.

Mom:

I don’t care what it is. I’m calling your father tomorrow and telling him to make her cut it out.

Me (stricken, because if she does that, Grandmère will totally spill the beans to Amber Cheeseman about the money, and I will be elbowed in the throat. But I can’t tell Mom that, either, so I have to lie. Again):

No! Don’t! Please, Mom? I really… um… I really love it.

Mom:

Love what?

Me:

The play. I mean, musical. I really want to do it. Theater is my life. Please don’t make me stop.

Mom:

Mia. Are you feeling all right?

Me:

Fine! Just don’t call Dad, okay? He’s really busy with Parliament and everything right now. Let’s not bother him. I really like Grandmère’s play. It’s fun and a good chance for me to, um, broaden my horizons.

Mom:

Well… I don’t know….

Me:

Please, Mom. I swear my grades won’t slip.

Mom:

Well. All right. But if you bring home so much as a single C on a quiz, I’m calling Genovia.

Me:

Oh, thanks, Mom! Don’t worry, I won’t.

Then I had to go into my room and breathe into a paper bag because I thought I might be hyperventilating.

Saturday, March 6, 2 p.m., the Grand Ballroom, the Plaza

Okay, so acting may be a little harder than I thought it was. I mean, that thing I wrote a while back, about how the reason so many people want to be actors is because it’s really easy and you get paid a lot—

That might be true. But it turns out it’s not that easy. There’s a whole lot of stuff you have to remember.

Like blocking. That’s, like, where you move on the stage as you’re saying your lines. I always thought actors just got to make this up as they went along.

But it turns out the director tells them exactly where to move, and even on which word in which line to do it. And how fast. And in which direction.

At least, if that director is Grandmère.

Not that she’s the director, of course. Or so she keeps assuring us. Señor Eduardo, propped up in a corner with a blanket covering him to his chin, is REALLY directing this play. I mean, musical.

But since he can barely stay awake long enough to say, “And… scene!” Grandmère has generously come forward to take over.

I’m not saying this wasn’t her plan all along. But she sure isn’t admitting it if it was.

Anyway, in addition to all of our lines, we also have to remember our blocking.

Blocking isn’t choreography, though. Choreography is the dancing you do while you’re singing the songs.

For this, Grandmère hired a professional choreographer. Her name is Feather. Feather is apparently very famous for choreographing several hit Broadway shows. She also must be pretty hard up for cash if she’d agree to choreograph a snoozer like Braid! But whatever.

Feather is nothing like the choreographers I’ve seen in dancing movies like Honey or Center Stage. She doesn’t wear any makeup, says her leotard was made from hemp, and she keeps asking us to find our centers and focus on our chi.

When Feather says things like this, Grandmère looks annoyed. But I know she doesn’t want to yell at Feather since she’d be hard-pressed to find a new choreographer at such short notice if Feather quits in a fit of pique, as dancers are apparently prone to do.

But Feather isn’t as bad as the vocal coach, Madame Puissant, who normally works with opera singers at the Met and who made us all stand there and do vocal exercises, or vocalastics, as she called it, which involved singing the words Me, May, Ma, Mo, Moooo-oooo-oooo-ooo over and over again in ever-ascending pitches until we could “feel the tingle in the bridge of our nose.”

Madame Puissant clearly doesn’t care about the state of our chis because she noticed Lilly wasn’t wearing any fingernail polish and almost sent her home because “a diva never goes anywhere with bare nails.”

I noticed Grandmère seems to approve VERY highly of Madame Puissant. At least, she doesn’t interrupt her at all, the way she does Feather.

As if all of this were not enough, there was also costume measurements to endure and, in my case anyway, wig fittings as well. Because, of course, the character of Rosagunde has to have this enormously long braid, since that is, after all, the title of the play.

I mean, musical.

I’m just saying, everyone was worried about getting their LINES memorized in time, but it turns out there is WAY more involved in putting on a play—I mean, musical—than just memorizing your lines. You have to know your blocking and choreography as well, not to mention all the songs and how not to trip over your braid, which, since we don’t have a braid yet, in my case means not tripping over one of those velvet ropes they used to drape outside the Palm Court to keep people from storming it before it opened for afternoon tea, and which Grandmère has wrapped around my head.

I guess it isn’t any wonder I have a little headache. Although it’s not any worse than the ones I get every time they cram me into a tiara.

Right now J.P. and I have a little break because Feather is going over the choreography for the chorus of the song Genovia!, which everyone but he and I sing. It turns out that Kenny, in addition to not being able to sing or act, can’t dance either, so it is taking a really long time.

That’s okay, though, because I’m using the time to plot tonight’s Party Strategy and talk to J.P., who really turns out to know a LOT about the theater. That’s on account of his father being a famous producer. J.P. has been hanging around the stage since he was a little kid, and he’s met tons of celebrities because of it.

“John Travolta, Antonio Banderas, Bruce Willis, Renée Zellweger, Julia Roberts… pretty much everybody there is to meet,” is how J.P. replied, when I asked him who all he meant by celebrities.

Wow. I bet Tina would change places with J.P. in a New York minute, even if it meant, you know. Becoming a boy.

I asked J.P. if there was any celebrity he HADN’T met, that he wanted to, and he said just one: David Mamet, the famous playwright.

“You know,” he said, “Glengarry Glen Ross. Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Oleanna.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, like I knew what he was talking about.

I told him that was still pretty impressive—I mean, that he’d met almost everybody else in Hollywood.

“Yeah,” he said. “But you know, when it comes down to it, celebrities are just people, like you and me. Well, I mean, like me, anyway. You—well, you’re a celebrity. You must get that a lot. You know, people thinking you’re—I don’t know. This one thing. When really, you’re not. That’s just the public’s perception of you. That must be really hard.”

Were truer words ever spoken? I mean, look at what I’m dealing with right now: this perception that I’m not a party girl. When I most certainly AM. I mean, I’m going to a party tonight, right?

And okay, I’m totally dreading it and had to ask advice about it from the meanest girl in my whole school.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not a party girl.

Anyway, in addition to having met every single celebrity in the world except David Mamet, J.P. has been to every single play ever put on, including—and I couldn’t believe this—Beauty and the Beast.

And get this: It’s one of his all-time favorites, too.

I can’t believe that for all this time, I’ve been seeing him as the Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili—you know, just this freak in the cafeteria—when underneath he’s, like, this really cool, funny guy who writes poems about Principal Gupta and likes Beauty and the Beast and would like to meet David Mamet (whoever that is).

But I guess that’s just a reflection of how the educational system today, being so overcrowded and impersonal, makes it so hard for adolescents to break through our preconceived notions of one another, and get to know the real person underneath the label they’re given, be it Princess, Brainiac, Drama Geek, Jock, Cheerleader, or Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili.

Oops. Chorus rehearsal is over. Grandmère’s calling for the principal characters now.

Which means J.P and me. We sure have a lot of scenes together. Especially seeing as how up until I read Braid!, I never even knew my ancestress Rosagunde HAD a boyfriend.

Saturday, March 6, 6 p.m., limo on the way home from the Plaza

Oh my God, I’m soooo tired, I can barely keep my eyes open. Acting is SO HARD. Who knew? I mean, those kids on Degrassi make it look so easy. But they’re going to school and everything the whole time they’re filming that show. How do they DO it?

Of course, they don’t have to sing, except for those episodes where there’s like a band audition or whatever. Singing is even harder than ACTING, it turns out. And I thought that was the thing I’d have the least trouble with, because of my intensive self-training in the event I have to perform karaoke on a road trip to make food money like Britney in Crossroads.

Well, let me just say that I have a newfound respect for Kelis because to get that one perfect version of “Milkshake” on her album, she had to have rehearsed it five thousand times. Madame Puissant made me rehearse “Rosagunde’s Song” at LEAST that many times.

And when my voice started to get scratchy and I couldn’t hit the high notes, she made me grab the bottom of the baby grand piano Phil was accompanying me on, and LIFT!

“Sing from the diaphragm, Princess,” was what Madame Puissant kept yelling. “No breathing from the chest. From the DIAPHRAGM! No chest voice! SING FROM THE DIAPHRAGM! LIFT!!! LIFT!!!!”

I was just glad I’d put clear polish on all my nails the other day (so I’d be less tempted to bite them). At least she couldn’t yell at me about THAT.