Oh, no. It’s starting.

WHERE IS MICHAEL WHEN I NEED HIM????

Monday, September 14, ladies’ room

Well, here I am. In the ladies’ room. How unusual.

I don’t think I’ll be coming out for awhile. A long, long while. As in…maybe never.

The whole thing was so surreal. I mean, I saw Principal Gupta tap on the microphone. I heard the murmuring from the people in the bleachers suddenly stop. Every single eye in the place was on us.

And then Principal Gupta welcomed everyone to the debate—making a special effort to thank Larry King for coming, with his cameras—and explained the importance of the student council, and the vital role the president plays in its governance. Then she said, “We have two very different young ladies—each with her own uniquely, er, strong personality—running for office today. I hope you will give them all your attention while each of our candidates tells us why she is suited to the role of president, and what she intends to do to make Albert Einstein High School a better place.”

And then—I guess as punishment for the whole braid-ripping-out thing—Principal Gupta let Lana go first.

The applause that went up as Lana swished her way to her podium could only be called thunderous. The whoops and catcalls, the chants of “La-na, La-na,” were almost deafening, especially since it was the gym, after all, and the sound really carried, what with the metal rafters.

Then Lana—looking coolly unconcerned over the fact that she was addressing a thousand of her peers, and another seventy-five or so members of the AEHS faculty and staff (if you count the lunch ladies), my entire family, and a number of CNN correspondents—began to speak.

Suffice it to say that what those thousand peers of hers wanted to hear—well, most of them, anyway—Lana gave them. Not surprisingly, Lana turned out to be a strong supporter of better cafeteria food, a longer lunch hour, larger mirrors in the girls’ bathrooms, less homework, more sports, guaranteed admission from the guidance office to such Ivy League schools as AEHS graduates might want to attend, and more diet and low-carb options in the candy and soda machines. She was against the outdoor security cameras, and vowed to have them removed. She promised a cheering student populace that if they elected her as president, she would make all of these things happen….

…even though I happen to know that she can’t. Because those security cameras may infringe upon the rights of the people who like to smoke outside the school and litter the steps with their gross cigarette butts, but mostly they help keep the school safe from vandalism and break-ins.

And the food distributor for the cafeteria is the same one that services all the schools—and hospitals—in the area, and offers the lowest prices for the highest quality food that can be found in the tri-state area.

And if the trustees approve a longer lunch period, they’ll have to shorten classes, which are already only fifty minutes.

And where does Lana think she’s going to get the money for bigger mirrors in the ladies’ room? And has she considered the facts that:

less homework will leave us less prepared for the college courses some of us might want to take later on? more sports will result in less money for enrichment programs in the arts? no one can be guaranteed admission to an Ivy League school, not even people whose parents went there? our choices in the candy and soda machines are limited to what the vendors are able to offer?

Obviously not.

But I guess that didn’t matter to her. Or to her constituents, since by the time she finished, they were screaming their heads off, and pounding their feet on the bleachers to show their approval. I saw Ramon Riveras stand up and whip his school blazer around his head a few times to pump the crowd up even more.

Principal Gupta looked a little tight-lipped as she stepped up to the microphone and said, “Er, um, thank you, Lana. Mia, would you like to respond?”

I thought I was going to barf. I really did. Although, I don’t know what I possibly could have thrown up, since I hadn’t been able to eat breakfast this morning, and only had five Starbursts Lilly had given me, half a Bit-O-Honey mooched off Boris, three Tic Tacs from Lars, and a Coke in my system.

But as I started walking toward that podium—my knees shaking so badly, I’m surprised they even managed to hold me up—something happened. I don’t know what, exactly. Or why.

Maybe it was the intermittent booing.

Maybe it was the way Trisha Hayes pointed at my combat boots and snickered.

Maybe it was the way Ramon Riveras cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted, “PIT! PIT!” in a manner that could hardly be called flattering.

But as I looked out at the sea of humanity before me, and saw bobbing amidst it Perin’s bright and shining face, as she clapped her guts out for me, it was like the ghost of my ancestress, Rosagunde, the first princess of Genovia, took over my body.

Either that, or my patron saint Amelia did some swooping down from the clouds to lend me some of her axe-wielding ’tude.

In any case, even though I still wanted to barf, and all, when I got to the podium, and remembered the way Grandmère had harangued me about leaning my elbows on it, I did something totally unheard of in the history of student council presidential debates at Albert Einstein High School:

I ripped the microphone off its stand, and, holding it in my hand, went to stand in FRONT of the podium.

Yeah. In front. So there was nothing for me to shield my body behind.

Nowhere for me to hide.

Nothing separating me from my audience.