“Hey,” he said softly, giving my fingers a squeeze. “It gets better. I promise.”

“Really?” I asked. It was too late now. The tears were coming. I tried to choke them back as best I could. “It’s not just…just Michael, you know,” I heard myself assuring him. Because I didn’t want anyone to think I was depressed just because of a boy. Even if that really was the truth. “I mean, there’s the whole thing with Lilly. I can’t believe she really thinks you and I—that you and I would ever—”

“Hey,” J.P. said, looking a little alarmed, I think at how fast my tears were coming. “Hey.”

And the next thing I knew, he had wrapped me in his big bearlike embrace, and I was weeping onto the front of his sweater. Which smelled like dry-cleaning fluid.

A fact that actually just made me weep harder, when I remembered that I would never again get to smell the one thing that I miss and love more than any other…Michael’s neck.

Which definitely does not smell of dry-cleaning fluid.

“Shhh,” J.P. said, patting me on the back while I cried. “It’s going to be okay. It really is.”

“I don’t see how,” I sobbed. “Lilly hates me! She won’t even look at me!”

“Well, maybe that should tell you something,” J.P. said.

“Tell me what?” I hiccupped against his chest. “That she hates me? I already know that.”

“No,” J.P. said. “That maybe she’s not as great a friend as you’ve always thought she was.”

This actually caused me to stop crying and sit back and blink at him tearfully.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, just that if she really was as good a friend as you seem to think,” J.P. said, “she wouldn’t believe that there’s anything going on between you and me. Because she’d know you aren’t capable of something like that. She certainly wouldn’t be mad at you for something you didn’t even do—despite maybe a little evidence to the contrary. I mean, did she even bother asking you if that thing in the Post about us was true?”

I dabbed at the corners of my eyes with a napkin J.P. pulled out of a nearby holder and handed to me.

“No,” I said.

“I haven’t had a lot of friends,” J.P. said. “I’ll admit it. But I still don’t think friends treat each other that way—just believing something they read or heard without even confirming whether or not it’s really true. Right? I mean, what kind of friend does that?”

“I know,” I said with a last, shuddering little sob. “You’re right.”

“Look,” J.P. said. “I know you’ve been friends with her forever, Mia. But there’s a lot of stuff about Lilly I don’t think you know. Stuff she told me when we were going out that—well, I mean, for instance, she was always pretty jealous of you.”

I stared at him, totally astonished.

“What are you TALKING about?” I cried. “Why on earth would Lilly ever be jealous of ME?”

“For the same reason I imagine a lot of girls—including Lana Weinberger—are jealous of you. You’re pretty, you’re smart, you’re popular, you’re a princess, everyone likes you—”

“WHAT?” I was laughing now. In disbelief. But still. It was better than crying. “I look like a Q-tip! And I’m flunking half my classes! And MOST of the people in school think I’m nothing but a five-foot-nine, I mean-ten, flat-chested freak—”

“Maybe some of them used to think that,” J.P. said, smiling at me. “And maybe to some of them, you used to seem that way. But, Mia, you need to take a good look at yourself in the mirror. You aren’t that person anymore. And maybe that’s what Lilly’s problem is. You’ve changed…and she hasn’t.”

“That…that’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’m still the same old Mia—”

“Who eats meat and goes shopping with Lana Weinberger,” J.P. pointed out. “Face it, Mia. You’re not the same person you used to be. That doesn’t mean you aren’t BETTER, or that there aren’t people who are going to love you no matter what you eat or who you hang out with. But not everyone is going to be able to wrap their minds around it the way, say, Tina and I have.”

I blinked at him some more. Could this be true? Could the real reason Lilly wanted nothing to do with me be because, far from being disgusted with me, she’s actually jealous of me?

“But that’s so absurd!” I finally burst out. “Lilly’s so much smarter and more accomplished than I am. She’s a genius, for crying out loud! What could I possibly have that she doesn’t? Except a tiara.”

“That’s a big part of it,” J.P. said with a shrug. “The fact that you’re a princess is really special. I’ve never understood why you’ve never thought so. Most people would kill to be royal, and yet you spend all your time wishing you weren’t. Not that being royal is all that makes you special…by any means.”

“If you spent five minutes in my shoes,” I grumbled, “you’d realize how not special being me really is. Believe me. There’s not a special bone in my body.”

“Mia,” J.P. said, lifting up my hand from the counter. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you—”