Princess Mia

Except, of course, if you’re dying of the plague, it’s really not a good idea to hide anything close to your heart.

Because your corpse is just going to get burned to a cinder by your uncle in a fiery funereal pyre.

Wednesday, September 22, G & T

Lana just dropped a small weapon of mass destruction on the lunch table. Just dropped it, then shrugged, like it was nothing. But that, I’m learning, is her way.

“So how long has that been going on?” she wanted to know, waggling her fingers at the lunch table where Lilly was sitting with Kenny Showalter, et al.

I glanced over to where she was pointing. “Oh. Well, Lilly isn’t speaking to me for a number of reasons. First, and probably foremost, she blames me for J.P. dumping her—”

“Hey!” J.P. protested. “I didn’t dump her! I told her I thought it would be better if we were just friends.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around. Second,” I informed Lana, “Lilly’s upset because I refused to run for student council president. Even though I never wanted to be student council president in the first place, she did. Third, she—”

“I don’t mean how long have you two been fighting,” Lana said, rolling her eyes. “I meant, how long have she and the Beanpole been banging?”

Sometimes it’s quite difficult to understand what Lana is saying, because she uses a type of slang with which no one else at our lunch table (aside from Trisha Hayes and Shameeka, who has also come back into the fold) is familiar.

“Beanpole?” I echoed.

“Banging?” Tina added.

Lana rolled her eyes again and said, “How long has Lilly Moscovitz been sleeping with Mr. Rocket Science?”

I dropped my beef and cheese taquito.

“WHAT?” I cried. “Lilly and Kenny?”

But Lana just blinked her super long, volume-enhanced, mascaraed lashes and went, “Duh. I told you I saw them sucking face at Around the Clock this past weekend.”

“You said you saw Lilly and a NINJA making out,” I said. “Not KENNY. Kenny Showalter is not a ninja.”

“No,” Lana said as she chewed her tuna-avocado roll—which she has specially delivered every day for lunch since the caf doesn’t do sushi. “It was definitely that guy over there.”

“Totally,” Trisha said. “I’d recognize that bulbous Adam’s apple anywhere. It was bobbing all over the place.”

Tina and I looked at each other in shock. Then Tina swung an accusing glare at her boyfriend.

“Boris,” she said. “Was the guy Lilly was making out with in her kitchen KENNY?”

Boris looked uncomfortable. “It was hard to tell,” he said. “His back was to me. And all those muay thai fighters looked the same with their shirts off.”

“Oh my God!” Tina cried. “It was Kenny! Boris! You got Mia all upset for nothing, thinking Lilly was hooking up with a random strange muay thai fighter in her despair over J.P. dumping her, when really it was Kenny all along!”

“I didn’t dump her!” J.P. insisted.

But Boris just looked bored. “Who cares?” he wanted to know. “When are things going to go back to normal around here?”

On the word normal, he looked over at Lana and Trisha.

No one, of course, noticed. Except for J.P., who smiled at me. J.P. really does have a nice smile.

Not that that has anything to do with any of this.

Anyway, at first I was like, “But Lilly could so easily break Kenny’s neck with her thighs, like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner.”

But then I remembered how Kenny’s been bulking up with all that muay thai fighting.

So. I’m happy for her. I really am. I mean, if she’s happy, I’m happy.

But still. KENNY SHOWALTER????????

Wednesday, September 22, Chemistry

I don’t care about the ban on my writing in class: I HAVE to get this down.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I HAD to ask Kenny what was going on with him and Lilly.

So I just went, “Kenny. Is it true about you and Lilly going out? Because if so I want you to know, I think you guys make a really nice couple.”

(Lie. But since when do I ever tell the truth?)

Anyway, Kenny totally didn’t seem to appreciate my kind remarks. He went, “Mia! Do you mind? I’m in the acid neutralization phase!”

So then I was like, “Fine, sorry I said anything,” and went back to my stool to write this.

And then a second ago J.P. sat down next to me and was like, “So, am I in the clear now?”

And I was like, “In the clear for what?”

And he was like, “Breaking Lilly’s heart. Now that she’s learned to love again, as Tina would put it.”

So I laughed and said, “J.P., whatever, I never blamed you for what happened between you and Lilly. You can’t help it if you didn’t feel the same way about her that she felt about you.”

Although he could probably have helped by not leading her on for so long. But I didn’t add that part out loud.

“I’m glad you feel that way, Mia,” J.P. said. “Because there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time now, and every time I start to, something seems to happen to interrupt me, so I’m just going to say it now, even though this might not be the ideal mo———————————————————”