Forever Princess

  And J.P. is totally into it. I mean, I thought I used to be into it, back when I was a freshman and I lived and breathed prom, prom, PROM!

  But J.P. loves it. He wants to dance every single dance. He ate every bit of his chicken (rubbery, just as I suspected) and he ate mine, too (I’m a flexatarian, but not that flex). He brought his digital camera, and he’s taken 8,000 pictures—we’re all at a big table together, Lana and her date (a Westpointer, in full uniform), and Trisha and Shameeka with theirs, and Tina and Boris, and Perin and Ling Su and some guys they dug up somewhere for the benefit of their parents. Every five minutes, J.P. is like, “Smile!”

  Which isn’t so bad. But as we were coming in, he made me stop and pose for the paparazzi with him outside the hotel (which…I’m trying to understand. I mean, first Blue Ribbon…then my party…then his play…now the prom. Is it just me or is it like TMZ has LoJack on my boyfriend?).

  But that’s not the worst part. Not by a long shot. Oh, no. The worst part is, the boys at the table were all bragging about what hotel rooms they’d gotten for after prom (which, no offense, but except for J.P. and maybe Boris, I happen to know the GIRLS all made the hotel room reservations), and showing off their keys, and J.P. whipped his Waldorf key out like it was nothing—right in front of everybody.

  I wanted to die. I mean, I don’t even know Lana’s, Trisha’s, and Shameeka’s dates! Can we not show a little discretion? Especially since—

  Wait a minute.

  How did J.P. get a room at the Waldorf when Tina said the hotel was sold out so many weeks ago? And J.P. only called this past week?

  Saturday, May 6, 10 p.m., Waldorf-Astoria, table ten

  I just marched back up to our table and asked J.P. about the hotel reservation.

  And he told me, “Oh, I called, and they had a room. It was no problem. Why?”

  But when I asked Tina what she thought about it later, after J.P. had gone to get me some punch, she said, “Well, I guess…maybe…they had a cancellation?”

  But wouldn’t they have had a waiting list?

  And how could J.P. have been at the top of the waiting list, calling that day?

  Something just didn’t seem right about his answer. It’s not that I don’t trust J.P. But that…that seemed weird to me.

  So I went to my source for all evil and duplicitous scheming (now that Lilly is basically out of my life): Lana.

  She stopped sucking face with her date long enough to go, “Duh. He must have made the reservation months ago. He was obviously planning on getting with you tonight all along. Now go away, can’t you see I’m busy?”

  But that can’t possibly be true. Because J.P. and I never even discussed the possibility of having sex tonight—until I texted him about it the other day. We’ve never even gotten to second base before! Why would he assume I’d want to have sex on prom night? He didn’t even ask me to go to the prom until last week. I mean, isn’t making a reservation for a hotel room on our prom night without even having asked me to go to the prom a little bit…presumptuous?

  So. Yeah. I started freaking out. Just a little. About that. I mean, could J.P. really have been planning, all this time, for us to have sex tonight? When we’ve never even talked about it?

  The thing is…I can tell by his play and all that he’s planning on marrying me and becoming a prince someday. He even called his play A Prince Among Men. So…it’s not like he doesn’t plan for the future. He’s even gotten me a gigantic ring.

  And maybe it isn’t an engagement ring.

  But it’s the next closest thing.

  And that’s not all. When we were dancing just now, I said, just casually commenting, really, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about since my close call with the carriage ride yesterday, “J.P., do you think it’s weird how everywhere you and I go together, the paparazzi show up? Like tonight, for instance?”

  And J.P. said, “Well, it’s good press for Genovia, don’t you think? Your grandmother’s always saying every time you appear in the papers, it’s like a free tourism ad for your country.”

  And I said, “I guess. But it’s just strange because they show up so randomly. Like when I went to Applebee’s the other night with Mamaw and Papaw, I was terrified the paps were going to show up and get a shot of me. And that would have ruined Dad’s chances in the election. Can you imagine if TMZ or whoever had gotten a shot of me eating in an Applebee’s? But they didn’t.”

  And they didn’t show up yesterday, when I was in the old-timey horse carriage with Michael. But I didn’t add that part out loud. Obviously.

  “I just don’t get how sometimes they know where I’m going to be, and sometimes they don’t,” I went on. “I know Grandmère’s not tipping them off. She’s evil, but she’s not that evil—”

  J.P. didn’t say anything. He just kept holding me close and dancing.

  “In fact,” I said. “They mostly only seem to show up when I’m with…you.”

  “I know,” J.P. said. “It’s so annoying, isn’t it?”

  Yeah. It is. Because it only started happening, really, when I started going out with J.P. My very first date with J.P., when we went to see Beauty and the Beast together. That was the first time the press got a shot of us, coming out of the theater, looking like a couple, even though we weren’t.

  I’d always wondered who’d called and told them we were there together. And every other subsequent date we’d gone on, many of which there’d been no way they could have known about in advance—like when we’d gone to Blue Ribbon Sushi the other night. How had they known about that, a casual sushi date around the corner from my house? I go out to eat around the corner from my house all the time, and the paps never show up.

  Unless J.P. is there.

  “J.P.,” I said, looking up at him in the blue and pink party lights. “Are you the one who’s been calling the paps and telling them where they can find us?”

  “Who, me?” J.P. laughed. “No way.”

  I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was that laugh…which sounded just slightly nervous. Maybe it was the fact that after all this time, he still hadn’t read my book. Maybe it was the fact that he’d put that sexy dancing scene in his play, for everyone to laugh at. Or maybe it was the fact that his character, J.R., seemed to want to be a prince so very, very badly.

  But somehow, I just knew:

  That “No way” was J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV’s Big Fat Lie Number One. Actually, make that Number Two. I think he was lying about the hotel room reservation, too.

  I couldn’t stop staring at him, gazing down at me with that nervous smile on his lips.

  This, I thought, wasn’t the J.P. I knew. The J.P. who didn’t like it when they put corn in his chili and who kept a creative writing journal that was a Mead composition notebook exactly like all of mine and who’d been in therapy for way longer than I had. This was some different J.P.

  Except it wasn’t. This was the exact same J.P.

  Only I knew him better now.

  “I mean,” J.P. said, with a laugh. “Why would I do that? Call the paparazzi on myself?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “because you like seeing yourself in the paper?”

  “Mia,” he said, looking down at me with the same nervous smile on his face. “Come on. Let’s just dance. You know what? I heard a rumor we might get voted prom king and queen.”

  “My foot hurts,” I said. This was a lie. But for once, I didn’t feel guilty about it. “These are new shoes. I think I have to sit down a minute.”

  “Oh, no,” J.P. said. “I’ll go see if I can find you a Band-Aid. Stay here.”

  So J.P. is looking for a Band-Aid.

  And I’m trying to figure this out.

  How could J.P.—J.P., who is so big and blond and good-looking, the guy with whom I have so much in common, the guy everyone liked so much better for me than Michael—be someone it turns out I may have nothing in common with at all?

  It can’t be possible. It can’t be.

/>   Except…what was Dr. Knutz talking about the other day?

  His story about his horse, Sugar. The thoroughbred, who looked so good on paper, but in whose saddle he could never find a comfortable place? Dr. Knutz had to give up Sugar, because he never wanted to ride her, and it wasn’t fair to Sugar.

  I get it now. I so get it.

  Some people can seem perfect…everything about them can, on paper, be just right.

  Until you get to know them. Really know them.

  Then you find out, in the end, while they might be perfect to everyone else, they just aren’t right for you.

  On the other hand…

  What’s so wrong about a guy who loves his girlfriend getting a hotel room for the two of them on prom night, months in advance? Oh, big crime.

  So he screwed up with the play? If I ask him to, I’m sure he’d change it. I—

  Oh my God. There’s Lilly.

  She’s in black from head to toe. (Well, so am I, actually. Only somehow I don’t think I look like a trained assassin, the way she does.)

  She’s heading for the ladies’ room.

  Okay, I think this might constitute stalking. But I’m going in after her. She dated J.P. for six months.

  If anyone will know if my boyfriend’s a great big phony, she will. Whether or not she’ll even speak to me is another story.

  But Dr. Knutz did say, when I figured out what the right thing to do was, I’d do it.

  I really hope this is it….

  Saturday, May 6, 11 p.m., the Waldorf-Astoria,

  ladies’ room

  Okay. I’m shaking. I have to stay in here until my knees stop trembling long enough for me to stand up again. For now I’m just going to sit here on this little velvet settee and try to write this down so it makes some kind of sense—

  In any case…

  I guess I finally know why Lilly was so mad at me for so long.

  I walked into the bathroom and there she was putting bright red lipstick on in the mirror.

  It looked exactly like blood.

  She glanced at my reflection and sort of raised her eyebrows.

  But I wasn’t going to back off, even though my heart was pounding. Grant me the courage to change the things I can.

  I checked to make sure we were the only people in the room. We were. And then I went, to her reflection, before I could lose my nerve, “Is J.P. a total fake, or what?”

  She very calmly put the lid back on her lipstick and slipped it into her evening clutch. Then she said with an expression of total disgust, turning around to look me in the eye, “Took you long enough.”

  I won’t say it was like she plunged a knife into my chest, or anything dramatic like that. Because the part of me that used to think I loved J.P. had stopped thinking that as soon as I spilled the hot chocolate on Michael last week, and I realized that whole loving J.P. thing had just been wishful thinking. I mean, I guess I could have trained myself to fall in love with J.P. eventually, if Michael Moscovitz had never come back from Japan and then been so nice to me and made me realize I’d never fallen out of love with him.

  But that will never happen now.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Lilly. I wasn’t mad, really. Too much time had passed—and water gone under the bridge—for me to be mad. I was just curious, more than anything.

  “Oh, what,” Lilly said, letting out a sarcastic laugh, “you’re the one who started going out with him the day he dumped me, practically—dumped me for you, by the way.”

  “He did not dump you for me,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not how it happened.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Lilly said. “I was there, you were not. I think I would know. J.P. most assuredly dumped me because, as he said, and I quote, he was hopelessly in love with you. I didn’t mention that part, did I, the day I told you about our breakup?”

  I stared at her, feeling color creep up my face. “No—”

  “Well, that’s what he told me. That he was dumping me like a hot potato the minute it looked like things were over with you and Michael because now he, quote, had a chance with you, unquote. But I told him there was no way in hell my best friend would ever give him the time of day, because you would never do something like go out with the guy who’d broken my heart.” Her look of disgust deepened. “Oh, but…I guess I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

  I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe it. J.P.? J.P. had told Lilly he loved me…before he and I had even started going out? J.P. had dumped Lilly because I’d become available?

  That was worse—way worse—than calling the paps on me, and telling them where I’d be having dinner.

  Or getting a publisher to agree to print my book without even having read it.

  “Don’t try to deny it, Mia,” Lilly went on, her upper lip curling. “Not five minutes after I told you about our breakup—our next class period, practically—I saw you two kissing.”

  “That was a mistake!” I cried. “He turned his head at the last minute!” On purpose, I knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  But then, I shouldn’t have been flinging my arms around boys in the hallway, anyway.

  “Oh, and it was a mistake that you two went out on a date the same night my brother left for Japan?” she asked, with a sneer.

  “It wasn’t a date,” I said. “We went as friends.”

  “That’s not how the press saw it,” Lilly said, shaking her head.

  “The press?” I inhaled, a single, horrified breath as the truth finally sunk in…after twenty-one long months. “Oh, God. He called them that night. The night we went to see Beauty and the Beast. That’s why the paparazzi showed up. J.P. called them himself.”

  “Oh, NOW you finally realize it.” Lilly shook her head. Now that the blindfold had been lifted from my eyes at last, she’d stopped looking so disgusted. “He played us both. He only went out with me because it was a way to be closer to you…although I’m not entirely sure what sleeping with me had to do with you—”

  “Oh my God!” That’s when all the bones in my body turned into jelly and I had to sit down before I fell down. I collapsed onto one of the velvet couches the Waldorf-Astoria hotel staff had helpfully supplied for this purpose, and sunk my head into my hands.

  Also, I would just like to add, I knew it! I knew they Did It! Way back in the beginning of eleventh grade, I knew it.

  “Lilly!” I cried. “You told me you never slept with him! I specifically asked you, and you said he could have taken advantage, and he never did!”

  “Yeah,” Lilly said, sinking down beside me and slumping against the wall. Her face was devoid of expression. “Well, I lied. I still had some pride, I guess. And anyway, it’s not like I didn’t get something out of it, too. I was totally warm for the guy’s form. I just would have appreciated it if, in the end, he wouldn’t have turned out to be lusting for my best friend the whole time.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, again. I was having a whole lot of trouble picturing J.P. and my best friend—Lilly—doing…well. That.

  Also, what about all those times J.P. said he was a virgin, just like me? About how he was so glad he’d waited for the right girl, and how that girl was me? J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV’s Big Fat Lie Number Four. Or was it Five, now? Wow, he was going to start beating my lying record soon.

  “Lilly,” I said. My heart felt like it was twisting in my chest, I felt so bad. Not for myself. For Lilly. I understood now. Everything…even about ihatemiathermopolis.com. This didn’t make it right.

  But it made it more understandable.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said, reaching out to take her hand, with its black-painted nails. “I had no idea. And…well, about the other thing. Him dumping you for me. I had no idea about that, either. Honestly, though…why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Mia, come on.” Lilly shook her head. “Why should I have had to? As my best friend, shouldn’t my ex have been off-limits? You should have known bet
ter. And what were you doing, breaking up with my brother over that dumb Judith Gershner thing in the first place? That was just so…psychotic. Most of the beginning of last year, you were psychotic.”

  I bit my lower lip. “Yeah,” I said. “I know. But the things you did didn’t help, you know.”

  “I know,” Lilly said. When I glanced at her, I saw there were tears in her eyes. “I guess I was pretty psychotic, too. I…well, I loved him, you know. And he dumped me for you. And I…I was just so angry with you. And you were being so stupidly blind about who he really was. But…you seemed happy. And by then I had Kenny, and I was happy…and well, I figured maybe now that he had you, J.P. would be better…how do you apologize for something like that…what I did?”

  She looked at me and shrugged helplessly. I looked back at her, my own eyes filled with tears, as well.

  “But, Lilly,” I said, sniffling a little. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”

  “I missed you, too,” Lilly said back. “Even though I kind of hated your guts for a while.”

  This made me sniffle harder.

  “I hated your guts, too,” I said.

  “Well,” Lilly said, the tears sparkling like jewels in the corners of her eyes. “We both acted like idiots.”

  “Because we let a boy come between our friendship?”

  “Two boys,” Lilly said. “J.P. and my brother.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe we should agree never to do that again.”

  “Agreed,” Lilly said, and snagged my pinky with hers. We pinky swore. Then, sobbing a little, we hugged.

  And it’s weird. She doesn’t smell like her brother.

  But she smells really good, just the same. She smells like something that reminds me of…well, of home.

  “Now,” Lilly said, wiping tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands, when she let go of me. “I have to get back to the party, before Kenny blows something up.”

  “Okay,” I said, with a shaky laugh. “I’ll be right out. I just need…I just need a minute.”

  “See you later, POG,” Lilly said.

  I can’t even tell you how good it felt to hear her call me that. Even though I used to hate it. I couldn’t help laughing as I wiped away my own tears.