I hope that’s not asking too much. I honestly don’t mean to be selfish. It’s just, you know. I love him, and all.

Hopefully,

Your friend,

Mia Thermopolis

Wednesday, March 10, Homeroom

So Lilly isn’t speaking to me, apparently. She wasn’t waiting outside her building this morning for us to pick her up and take her to school. And when I ran inside to buzz her apartment, no one answered.

But I know she’s not home sick because I saw her just now outside Ho’s Deli, buying a soy latte.

When I waved, she just turned her back.

So now BOTH the Moscovitzes are ignoring me.

This is not a very nice way to start my first day on the Path to Righteousness.

Wednesday, March 10, PE

Okay, so I know skipping gym is probably not the most direct path to achieving transcendence from the ego.

But it’s for a totally good cause!

Even Lars thinks so. Which is convenient since I’m going to need his help carrying the stuff. I mean, I don’t have the upper body strength to lift 3,700 pieces of paper.

At least, not all at once.

Wednesday, March 10, U.S. Economics

Okay. So I guess I still have a ways to go on the path to righteousness. I mean, I really THOUGHT I was doing the right thing.

At first.

I totally remembered Lilly’s locker combination from the time she got the flu and I had to bring her her books.

And when I opened her locker door, the stack of a thousand copies of Fat Louie’s Pink Butthole, Volume I, Issue 1, was just sitting right there, waiting to be sold today at lunch.

It was so easy to grab them.

Well, okay, not THAT easy, because they were heavy. But Lars and I split the pile between us, and I was frantically looking around for a place to hide them—someplace Lilly would never find them, because you so know she’s going to look—when I spied the men’s room.

Well, come on! How’s she going to look for them there?

So Lars and I staggered in there, with these giant armfuls of paper, and I barely had time to register the fact that in the men’s rooms at AEHS, there is no mirror over the sinks, and also no doors on the bathroom stalls (which is completely sexist if you ask me, because don’t boys need privacy and to see how their hair looks, too?) before I realized we were not alone in there.

Because John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy the Fourth was standing at one of the sinks, wiping his hands on a paper towel!!!!!

“Mia?” J.P. looked back and forth from Lars to me. “Um, hey. What’s up?”

Both Lars and I had frozen. I went, “Um. Nothing.”

But J.P. didn’t believe me. Obviously.

“What’s all that?” he asked, nodding at the huge stacks of papers we were each sagging under.

“Um,” I said, desperately trying to think of some kind of excuse I could give him.

Then I remembered I’m supposed to be treading the Path of Truth, and all, and I had pledged to the memory of Dr. Carl Jung not to lie anymore.

So I had no choice but to say, “Well, the truth is, these are copies of my short story for Fat Louie’s Pink Butthole, which I stole out of Lilly’s locker and am trying to hide in the men’s room, because I don’t want anyone to read them.”

J.P. raised his eyebrows. “Why? You don’t think your story’s any good?”

I REALLY wanted to say yes.

But since I swore I’d tell the truth from now on, I was forced to say, “Not exactly. The truth is, I wrote this story, um, about you. But way before I had ever met you! And it’s really stupid and embarrassing, and I don’t want you to read it.”

J.P.’s eyebrows went up even MORE.

But he didn’t look mad. He looked—actually, he sort of looked like he was kind of flattered.

“You wrote a story about me, huh?” He leaned against one of the sinks. “But you don’t want me to read it. Well, I can see your dilemma. Still, I don’t think hiding them, even in the men’s room, is going to work. She’s bound to get someone to look in here, don’t you think? I mean, it’s the first place I’d look, if I were Lilly.”

The thing was, after he said it, I knew he was right. Hiding the copies in the men’s room wasn’t going to keep Lilly from finding them.

“What else can we do with them?” I wailed. “I mean, where can we put all this so she won’t find it?”

J.P. appeared to think about this for a moment. Then he straightened up and said, “Follow me,” and walked past us, back out into the hallway.

I looked at Lars. He shrugged. Then we followed J.P. out into the hall, where we found him pointing…

…at one of the recycling bins. One of the ones I’d ordered, that said PAPER, CANS, AND BATTLES on it.

My shoulders sagged with disappointment.

“She’ll totally look there,” I wailed. “I mean, it even says PAPER on it.”

“Not,” J.P. said, “if we put it all in the crusher.”

Which was when he tossed the paper towel he’d used to dry his hands into the can section of the recycling bin…

…which immediately sprang to life, and began its crushing action, smushing the paper towel to shreds.

“Voilà,” J.P. said. “Your problem is solved. Permanently.”

But as the recycling bin’s internal crushing device finally quieted down, I looked down at the stack of magazines in my arms.

And knew that I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. As much as I hated that horrible cover, and the story I’d written beneath it, I knew I couldn’t destroy something Lilly had worked so hard on.