Which was turn to Josh and ask, "Why did you do that?"

He was busy patting himself down, trying to find the dance tickets to hand to the sophomores who were manning the ticket table. "Do what?"

"Kiss me like that, in front of everybody."

He found the tickets in his wallet. "I don’t know," he said. "Didn’t you hear them? They were yelling at me to kiss you. So I did. Why?"

"Because I didn’t appreciate it."

"You didn’t appreciate it?" Josh looked confused. "You mean you didn’t like it?"

"Yes," I said. "That’s exactly what I mean. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. Because I know you didn’t kiss me because you like me. You just kissed me because I’m the princess of Genovia."

Josh looked at me like he thought I was crazy.

"That’s crazy," he said. "I like you. I like you a lot."

I said, "You can’t like me a lot. You don’t evenknow me. That’s why I thought you asked me out. So you could get to know me better. But you haven’t tried to get to know me at all. You just wanted to get your picture onExtra."

He laughed at that, but I noticed he didn’t look me in the eye when he said, "What do you mean, I don’t even know you? Of course I know you."

"No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have ordered me a steak for dinner."

I heard a murmur go around through all of my friends. I guess they recognized the seriousness of Josh’s mistake, even if he didn’t. He heard them, too, so when he replied, he was talking to them, too. "So I ordered the girl a steak," he said, with his arms open in a so-sue-me sort of way. "That’s a crime? It wasfilet mignon, for God’s sake."

Lilly said, in her meanest voice, "She’s a vegetarian, you sociopath."

This information didn’t seem to bother Josh very much. He just shrugged and went, "Oops, my bad."

Then he turned to me and said, "Ready to slide?"

But I had no intention of sliding with Josh. I had no intention of doing anything with Josh, ever again. I couldn’t believe, after what I’d just said to him, he thought I’d stillwant to. The guy reallywas a sociopath. How could I ever have thought he’d seen into my soul? How???

Disgusted, I did the only thing a girl can be expected to do under those circumstances:

I turned my back on him and walked out.

Only, since of course I couldn’t go back outside—not if I didn’t wantTeen People to get a nice close-up of me crying—my only recourse was to walk out into the girls’ room.

It finally registered on Josh that I was ditching him. By that time, all of his friends had shown up, and they came tumbling through the doors just as Josh said, sounding totally peeved, "Jesus! It was just a kiss!"

I whirled around. "It wasn’t just a kiss," I said. I was getting really mad. "Maybe that’s how you wanted it to look, like it was just a kiss. But you and I both know what it really was: A media event. And one that you’ve been planning since you saw me in thePost. Well, thank you, Josh, but I can get my own publicity. I don’t needyou."

Then, after holding out my hand to Lars for my journal, I took it and stalked into the girls’ room. Which is where I am now, writing this.

God! Can you BELIEVE that? I mean, I ask you: My first kiss—my first kiss ever—and next week it’s going to be in every teen magazine in the country. Probably even some international magazines will pick it up, likeMajesty magazine, which follows the lives of all the young royals in Great Britain and Monaco. They ran a whole article on the wardrobe of Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, once, rating each one of her outfits on a scale of one to ten. They called it "Out of the Closet."I don’t suppose it will be too long beforeMajesty magazine starts following me around, rating my wardrobe—and boyfriends—too. I wonder what the caption under the picture of me and Josh will be. "Young Royal in Love"?

Excuse me, butew.

And the kicker of it all is that I am totally NOT in love with Josh Richter. I mean, it would have been nice—Who am I kidding? It would have been GREAT—to have a boyfriend. Sometimes I think there really is something wrong with me, that I don’t have one.

But the thing is, I would rather not have a boyfriend at all than have one who is only using me for my money or the fact that my father is a prince or for any reason, really, except that he likes me forme, and nothing else.

Of course, now that everyone knows I’m a princess, it’s going to be kind of hard to tell which guys like me for me and which guys like me for my tiara. But at least I realized the truth about Josh before things went on too long.

How could I have ever liked him? He’s such a user. He totally used me! He purposefully hurt Lana and then tried to use me. And I played right into his hands like the stupid sap that I am.

What am I going to do? When my dad sees that photograph, he is going to FLIP OUT. There is no way I will ever be able to explain that it wasn’t my fault. Maybe if I’d punched Josh in the stomach in front of all those cameras, maybe then my dad would believe I was an innocent bystander. . . . 

But probably not.

I will never be allowed out of the house with a boy again, ever, for the rest of my natural life.

Uh-oh. I see shoes outside my stall. Somebody is talking to me.

It’s Tina. Tina wants to know if I’m all right. Somebody is with her.

Oh my God, I recognize those feet! It’s Lilly! Lilly and Tina both want to know if I’m all right!

Lilly is actually speaking to me again. Not criticizing me or complaining about my behavior. She is actually speaking to me in a friendly manner. She’s saying through the stall door that she’s sorry for laughing at my hair and that she knows she’s controlling and that she suffers from a borderline authoritarian personality disorder, and she says she’s going to make a concerted effort to stop telling everyone, especially me, what to do.

Wow! Lilly is admitting she did something wrong! I can’t believe it! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!

She and Tina want me to come out and hang out with them. But I told them I don’t want to. It would be too awkward, all of them with dates and me by myself like a big dope.

And then Lilly goes, "Oh, that’s okay. Michael’s here. He’s been hanging around by himself like a big dope all night."

Michael Moscovitz came to a school event??? I can’t believe it!! He never goes anywhere, except to like lectures in quantum physics and stuff!!

I have got to see this for myself. I am going out there right now.

More later.

 

 

 

Sunday, October 19

I just woke up from the strangest dream.

In my dream, Lilly and I weren’t fighting anymore; she and Tina had become friends; Boris Pelkowski actually turned out to be not so bad when you got him away from his violin; Mr. Gianini said he was raising my nine week grade from an F to a D; I slow-danced with Michael Moscovitz; and Iran bombed Afghanistan, so there wasn’t a single picture of me and Josh kissing in any newspaper on the newsstand, since all the papers were filled with photos of war carnage.

But it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream at all, none of it! It had all really happened!

Because I woke up this morning with something wet on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that I was lying in the spare bed in Lilly’s room, and her brother’s sheltie was licking me all over my face. I mean it. I have dog spit all over me.

And I don’t even care! Pavlov can drool all over me if he wants to! I have my best friend back! I’m not going to flunk out of ninth grade! My dad isn’t going to kill me for kissing Josh Richter!

Oh, and I think Michael Moscovitz might like me!

I can hardly write for happiness.

Little did I know when I came out of the girls’ room last night with Lilly and Tina that all this happiness lay in store for me. I was morbidly depressed—yes,morbidly. Isn’t that a good word? I learned it from Lilly—over what had happened with Josh.

But when I came out of the girls’ room, Josh was gone. Lilly told me later that after I publicly humiliated him and then went storming off into the bathroom, Josh went on into the dance, not looking as if he cared too much. Lilly isn’t sure what happened after that, because Mr. G asked her and Tina to go and check on me (wasn’t that sweet of him?), but I have a feeling Lars might have used one of his special nerve-paralyzing holds on Josh, because the next time I saw him, Josh was slumped over at the Pacific Islander display table with his forehead resting on a model of Krakatoa. He didn’t move all night, either, but I just thought that was because of all the champagne he’d had to drink.

Anyway, Lilly and Tina and I joined Boris and Dave—who is really nice, even if he does go to Trinity—and Shameeka and her boyfriend, Allan, and Ling-Su and her date, Clifford, at this table they had snagged. It was the Pakistani table, with a display sponsored by the Economics Club, detailing how the market for maunds (a Pakistani unit of measurement) of rice was falling. We moved some of the maunds and sat there anyway, right on the tabletop, so we could see everything.

And then Michael suddenly appeared out of nowhere, looking crescent fresh—isn’t that a funny expression? I learned it from Michael—in the tux his mom made him get for his cousin Steve’s bar mitzvah. Michael really didn’t have anyone else to hang out with, since Principal Gupta ruled that the Internet is not a culture and therefore cannot have its own table, and so the Computer Club boycotted the Cultural Diversity Dance on principle.

But Michael didn’t seem to care what the Computer Club thought, and he’s the treasurer! He sat down next to me and asked if I was all right, and then we had fun for a while CracKing jokes about how all the cheerleaders sure don’t practice any cultural diversity, since they were all dressed in practically the same gown, a slinky black number by Donna Karan. Then somebody started talking aboutStar Trek: Deep Space Nine and whether or not there’s caffeine in replicator coffee, and Michael insisted that the matter used to make the things that come out of the replicator is from refuse, which means maybe when you order an ice cream sundae it might be made out of urine, but with the germs and impurities extracted. And we were all getting kind of grossed out when the music changed, and a slow song came on, and everybody left the table to go and dance.