Princess on the Brink (6 page)

The thing is, deep down, I know Tina is right.

But I just can’t get as enthusiastic about it as she is. Maybe because Aragorn, even though he was faithful to Arwen while he was off finding himself and all, still had that thing going on with Eowyn. Whatever that was.

What’s to keep Michael from having the same kind of thing with some brilliant Japanese geisha/robotics engineer?

La speakerine de la chaine douze a dit, “Maintenant, vraies croyantes, un petit film—le premier film d’une serie de six. Mesdames, voici le film que vous avez attendu pour des semaines. Un film remarkable, un film qui a changé ma vie et la vie d’autres femmes tout le monde. Oui,
Le Mérite Incroyable d’une Femme
.”

61+56=117

I passed Lana in the hallway on the way to class, and she went, “Hey, Pete! How’s Neverland?” which made her new clone, as well as her evil henchwoman Trish, laugh so hard that Diet Coke came out of their noses.

I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never been able to get all the way through
The Lord of the Rings
due to the fact that there are hardly any parts with girl characters in them (so I had to pretend Merry was a girl hobbit), but I’m fairly certain this never happened to Arwen.

So I was sitting here, innocently eating my falafel with tahini, when Ling Su sat down across from me, and went, “Mia. How
are
you?” with her eyes all big and sympathetic.

I went, “Um. Fine.”

Then Perin sat down next to me and was like, “Mia. We
heard
. Are you okay?”

God. News travels fast around this school.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to smile bravely. Which is no joke when you’ve got a big wad of falafel in your mouth.

“I can’t believe it,” Shameeka said. She doesn’t even normally EAT at our table, since she’s usually too busy spying for us over at the jock/cheerleader table. But all of a sudden, she’d put her tray down next to Perin’s. “Is he really moving to
JAPAN
?”

“Looks like it,” I said. It’s funny, but every time I hear the word
Japan
now, my heart does this funny twisty thing. The way it used to when I heard the word
Buffy
, back when the TV show
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
was ending.

“You should dump him,” Boris said after joining us.

“BORIS!” Tina looked shocked. “Mia, ignore him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Yes, I do,” Boris said. “I know exactly what I’m talking about. This happens in orchestras all the time. Two musicians fall in love, then one gets a better paying job at another rival orchestra in another city, or even another country. They always try to make it work—the long-distance thing—but it never does. Sooner or later one of them always falls in love with a clarinetist, and that’s it. Long-distance relationships
never work. You should dump him now, so it’s a nice clean break, and move on. End of story.”

Tina was staring at her boyfriend in shock. “Boris! That’s the most horrible thing to say! How could you
say
that?”

Boris didn’t get it, though. He just shrugged and went, “What? It’s the truth. Everyone knows it.”

“My brother isn’t going to fall in love with someone else,” Lilly said, in a bored voice, from where she sat farther down the table, across from J.P. “Okay? He’s completely besotted with Mia.”

“Ha,” Tina said, giving Boris a poke with her straw. “See?”

“I am only telling it the way I’ve experienced it,” Boris said. “Maybe Michael won’t fall in love with a clarinetist. But Mia will.”

“BORIS!” Tina looked outraged. “What on EARTH would make you say that???”

“Yeah, Boris,” Lilly said, looking at him like he was a bug she’d found in her hummus. “What’s this thing you’ve apparently got for clarinetists? I thought you considered woodwinds to be beneath you.”

“I am merely stating a fact,” Boris said, putting down his fork with a bang to illustrate his seriousness. “Mia is only sixteen years old. And they aren’t married. Michael shouldn’t think that he can just go off to a foreign country and that she is going to wait for him. It isn’t fair to her. She should be allowed to move on with her life, date other people, and have fun, not sit in her room every Saturday night for a year until he gets back.”

I saw Shameeka and Ling Su exchange glances. Ling Su even made an “Oops, he might actually be right” face.

Tina didn’t think he was right, though.

“Are you saying that if you got a job as first violin with the London Philharmonic, you wouldn’t want me to wait for you?” she asked her boyfriend.

“Of course I would
want
you to wait,” Boris explained. “But I wouldn’t ASK you to. It wouldn’t be fair. But I know you WOULD wait, anyway, because that’s the kind of girl you are.”

“Mia’s that kind of girl, too!” Tina said decidedly.

“No,” Boris said, gravely shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s okay, Boris,” I said quickly, before Tina’s head exploded. “I WANT to sit in my room every Saturday night until Michael gets back.”

Boris looked at me like I was nuts. “You DO?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do. Because I love Michael and if I can’t be with him, I’d rather not be with any boy.”

Boris just shook his head sadly.

“That’s what all the couples in my orchestra say,” he said. “And eventually, one of them gets tired of sitting in their room. Next thing you know, they’ve hooked up with a clarinetist. There’s
always
a clarinetist.”

This was very disconcerting. I was sitting there, feeling the same panic rising I feel every time I think of Michael’s leaving—just three more days! Three more days until he’s gone—when I happened to notice that J.P. was looking at me.

And then when I met his gaze, he smiled at me. And
rolled his eyes. As if to say, “Listen to the crazy Russian violinist! Isn’t he silly?”

And suddenly, the panic disappeared, and I felt all right again.

I smiled back and, reaching for my falafel, said, “I think Michael and I will be okay, Boris.”

“Of
course
they will,” Tina said. And then Boris yelped. It was clear Tina had kicked him beneath the table.

I hope she left a bruise.

So Lilly didn’t even give me twenty-four hours to recover from the blow her brother delivered. No, she started harping on the student government campaign again during G and T.

“Listen, POG,” she said. “I know you were the only person nominated for student council president, but you can’t win if at least fifty percent of the class doesn’t vote for you.”

“Who else are they going to vote for?” I wanted to know. “Especially if no one else is running?”

“Write-ins,” Lilly said. “Themselves. Who knows? You could end up being beaten by Lana anyway, even though she’s technically not running. You know her little sister just entered ninth grade, right?”

This information was meaningless to me. I mean, on account of my head being completely full of the fact that MY BOYFRIEND IS MOVING TO JAPAN FOR A YEAR (or more).

“Did you hear me, Mia?” Lilly was peering at me all concernedly over her student government binder. “Gretchen Weinberger is exactly like her older sis…only with a bigger chip on her shoulder. Think of that documentary we saw on MTV,
True Life
, on ’roid rage, and you’ll have a clear picture. Gretchen could undoubtedly rally the entire ninth grade against you if she wanted to. And, if you’ve gotten any kind of look at them, you can clearly see this freshman class is the most apathetic bunch of bottom-feeders that have ever walked the planet. I actually heard one of them insisting that global warming is all a myth because
Michael Crichton said so in that pathetic excuse for a book of his.”

I just looked at her some more. Was Gretchen Weinberger the clone—that slightly smaller version of Lana I’d seen laughing in the hallway over the elder Weinberger’s witticism concerning my haircut and Neverland? Probably. I’d just assumed at the time she was another Lana Wannabe. It makes sense she’s her sister.

“But that idiot’s remarks about that anti-science schlock-meister Crichton gave me an idea,” Lilly went on. “This is a generation that’s pretty much been raised on fear—fear of feminists, who as we all know are out to destroy family values—ha, ha—fear of terrorists, fear of getting a bad SAT score and then not getting into Yale or Princeton and therefore being a failure and having to go to some less well-known school from which they might—gasp—have to get an entry-level job after graduation making one hundred thousand dollars a year instead of one hundred and five thousand dollars a year. I say we play on these fears, and use them to our advantage.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked. Not that I cared. “And also, technically, we’re the same generation as Lana’s little sister. I mean, we’re older than she is. But she’s still our generation.”

“No, she isn’t,” Lilly said, with a gleam in her eye—a gleam I did not trust for one second. “She was born just late enough not to have been cognitively aware of
Party of Five
, and that makes us generationally separate. And I think I know EXACTLY where their weak spot is. I’m
working on it. I should have everything ready by tomorrow. Don’t worry, POG. They’ll be BEGGING you to be their student body president by the time I’m done with them.”

“Wow,” I said. “Well, thanks. But, see, the thing is, Lilly…I don’t think I want to run for student body president this year.”

Lilly just blinked at me. “What?”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“It’s just…well, you know what I got in math on my practice PSAT. And I have Precalculus AND Chemistry this year. I swear to God, it’s only been one day, and I don’t have the slightest idea what anybody is talking about in either of those courses. I mean, not even A LITTLE. I really think I need to concentrate on school work this year. I just don’t think I’m going to have time to run the school. Not with all that and princess stuff, too.”

Lilly raised one eyebrow. I hate when she does this. Because she knows how and I don’t.

“This is because of my brother, isn’t it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Because,” Lilly said, “I mean, if anything, now that he’s leaving, you’re going to have MORE time on your hands. Not less.”

“Yes,” I said, with some asperity. “But also, now that he’s leaving, I’m not going to have anybody to help me with my Precalc and Chem homework. I’m going to have to get a tutor or something. And tutors, unlike Michael, aren’t totally willing to come over and help me with a worksheet
at ten o’clock on a Wednesday night after I’ve been at a student council meeting and then some state dinner over at the Genovian embassy.”

Lilly didn’t look very sympathetic. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” she said. “You’re more apathetic than the rest of this school. You’re worse than the ninth graders!”

“Lilly,” I said. “I totally think you could win, without my help. I mean, for one thing, think about it—you’d be running unopposed.”

“You know I wouldn’t get fifty percent of the vote,” Lilly said through gritted teeth. “Why can’t you just run and step down, like you were SUPPOSED to do last year?”

“Because my boyfriend is leaving this country for a whole year in THREE DAYS,” I practically yelled, causing Mrs. Hill to glance up from her Isabella Bird catalog. I lowered my voice. “And I want to spend as much time as I can with him until then. Which means I DON’T want to be spending my evenings writing speeches and making
Mia for President
signs.”

“I’ll write the speeches,” Lilly said, her teeth still gritted. “And I’ll make the signs. You just do what you were supposed to last year, and step down like you said you were going to.”

“Oh, God,
whatever
,” I said, just to get her off my back. “FINE.”

“FINE,” Lilly said back.

And then it occurred to me that I was letting a golden opportunity slip through my fingers, and I added, “ON ONE CONDITION.”

And Lilly was like, “What?”

“You have to tell me if you and J.P. Did It over the summer.”

Lilly just glared at me for a while. Then, finally, like it was this supreme sacrifice, she said, “All right. I’ll tell you. AFTER the election.”

Which was fine with me. So long as I get to find out.

I don’t know why it’s so interesting to me. But, I mean, if my best friend has had sex, I think I should be allowed to hear about it. In detail. Especially considering the fact that I’m not going to be able even to SMELL my boyfriend for the coming year, and will have to live vicariously through Lilly’s romance.

Although she once told me she doesn’t go around smelling J.P.’s neck and thinks it’s very weird that I smell Michael’s all the time.

More than likely Lilly’s vomeronasal organ—her auxiliary olfactory sense organ—regressed during gestation like most humans’ do. Mine obviously didn’t.

Which is just another example of what a biological sport I am.

Mrs. Hill just asked me what I plan on doing in class this year. So I was forced to tell her about my practice PSAT math score.

Now she’s got me doing practice problems from the
Official SAT Study Guide.

I think that this, coupled with the rest of the events in the past twenty-four hours of my life, pretty much proves that God does not exist.

Or that if He does, He is supremely indifferent to my suffering.

Jill bought five apples at the grocery store. She paid with a five-dollar bill and received three quarters in change. Jill realized she’d received too much change, and gave back one of the quarters. How much did the apples cost?

WHATEVER. That is what debit cards are for. Okay, let’s move on.

What is the least positive integer divisible by the numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5?

Oh, right. Like I know. Okay, next:

The weight of the cookies in a box of 100 cookies is 8 ounces. What is the weight, in ounces, of three cookies?

WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW THIS IF ALL I’M GOING TO BE DOING SOMEDAY IS RUNNING A COUNTRY AND WILL HAVE MY OWN ROYAL ACCOUNTANTS? WHY WHY WHY???? IT ISN’T FAIR!!!!!!!!!!