The answer is obvious. I can’t even count the number of guys I dated after I found out I was a princess who turned out to only be interested in me for my tiara.

(Well, yes, I can, actually: two. Josh Richter and J. P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV. Not that I’m still bitter about it, or hold a grudge against them, or asked to have my Facebook password taken away and changed so I don’t spend hours obsessively looking up every detail of their lives to make sure they’re miserable without me, because only a weirdo would do that.)

•   Note to self: Ask Dominique what the new password is because it would be quite nice to see the photos Lana is posting of her new baby. I’m sure that at nearly twenty-six, I am mature (and self-actualized) enough not to go hunting down my exes. Besides, I am so happy in my own relationship that I don’t care what my exes are doing anymore. Very much.

One of the reasons I love Tina so much is that she understands and sympathizes with so many of my issues—being the daughter of an extremely wealthy Arab sheikh who also forces her to be followed around by bodyguards at all times—but she’s also the opposite of me in many ways. She’s good at math and science, and intends, as soon as she gets her medical license, to join Doctors Without Borders and help sick children. This is so admirable and amazing! I wish I could be more like her.

Except the part where she still hasn’t managed to sever all ties to her ex, Boris Pelkowski.

“Tina,” I said. “Michael and I are an anomaly. Hardly anyone stays together forever with their first significant other, except maybe in YA novels. And usually when they do, it’s because he’s a vampire or a werewolf or owns a beautiful estate called Pemberley or something.”

“But—”

“Seriously, did you think Lilly Moscovitz and Kenny Showalter were going to stay together forever when they both went off to Columbia after graduation?”

“Well,” Tina said. “I guess not after Kenny built that yurt in the middle of campus, then refused to go to class anymore.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s normal for people to change and grow, and for couples to sometimes grow apart.”

“You and Michael never grew apart. And what about Perin and Ling Su?”

I sighed. Just like I have a disproportionately large number of friends from my high school class, a disproportionately large number of the couples from that class have stayed together since graduation.

I blame the faculty. The absurd amount of homework with which they loaded us down every night gave many of us permanent post-traumatic stress. College—even though I attended Sarah Lawrence, one of the top schools in the country—was a breeze compared to AEHS (Albert Einstein High School).

“Okay, well, Perin and Ling Su are an anomaly, too,” I said to Tina. “But they’ve had their problems. Remember how they had to pretend for so long that they were only roommates?”

“Only because Ling Su’s grandparents were so old-fashioned,” Tina protested. “They totally support same-sex marriage now.”

“Yeah, because Perin worked so hard to win them over. She even learned Mandarin. What’s Boris done for you lately, Tina, except swap his classical violin for an electric guitar, write a bunch of cheesy pop songs, and then become an international pop sensation who is fawned over by millions of girls who call themselves the Borettes, one of whom he slept with?”

“Allegedly,” she reminded me. “He still says he didn’t do it. He says he misses me and wants to meet with me so he can explain—”

“Oh, Tina!”

“I know. But he still insists those pictures of him were Photoshopped, and that he would never, ever cheat on me.”

I could feel myself beginning to clench my jaw, and tried to relax it. Who could have imagined that Boris Pelkowski, the mouth-breathing violin virtuoso from my Gifted and Talented class way back in ninth grade, would become “Boris P.,” the purple-haired pop singer-songwriter who now plays sold-out concerts all over the world and has girls throwing themselves at him every time he steps from his limo (even though he still hasn’t quite learned to breathe through his nostrils, a fact the Borettes have declared “totes adorbs” on the Internet).

Although there was nothing “totes adorbs” about the nude photos one of those girls posted online of herself with him in a hotel room.

“What about the texts she posted that he sent her?” I asked Tina. “Did he have an explanation for those?”

“He said she did interview him for her blog, so the texts are real, but that everyone’s taken everything he said out of context, and that all the rest she made up to get more hits on her site. I mean, I guess that’s possible, right?”

“Um,” I said. “Sure. I guess so.”

Lie number one.

Boris had told Michael the exact same thing (the two of them are still friends—they get together to play World of Warcraft a few times a month. The fact that Boris enjoys playing online fantasy role-playing games only endears him more to the Borettes).

Michael refuses to stop speaking to Boris just because he “allegedly” cheated on my friend. He says there are two sides to every story, and as a fellow celebrity, I should understand how these kinds of things get twisted by the press, and that I should give Boris the benefit of the doubt.

But I’ve seen the photos. Some violin players develop Fiddler’s Neck, a sort of callus along the underside of their chin from holding their instrument there for extended periods of time.