“Trisha really has her priorities straight,” I pointed out. “Not looking pasty in front of celebrities comes before stalking my ex-boyfriends.”

“I don’t want to stalk Michael,” Shameeka said. “But I agree with Lana that we should at least check out this event. I want to see how Michael looks. Aren’t you curious, Mia?”

“No,” I said firmly. “And besides, I’m sure we won’t be able to get in. It’s probably closed to everyone but invited guests and press.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” Lana said. “You can get us in. You’re a princess. And besides, even if you can’t—you’re on the staff of theAtom . Get us press passes. Just ask Lilly.”

Lifting up my lunch tray, I shot her a very sarcastic look. It took Lana a second or two to realize what she’d said. Then, when she finally did, she went, “Oh. Yeah. He’s her brother. And she was really mad at you for dumping him last year, or something. Right?”

“Let’s just drop it,” I said. I swear, I wasn’t even hungry anymore. My tofurkey burger, sitting on its plate in front of me, looked completely unappetizing. I thought about ditching it for tacos. If ever there’d been a day I could have used some spicy beef, it seemed like today.

“Isn’t your little sister writing for theAtom this year?” Shameeka asked Lana.

Lana looked over at her little sister Gretchen, who was sitting with the other cheerleaders at a table by the door.

“Oooh,” Lana said. “Good suggestion. She’s such a little butt kisser, trying to get extracurriculars for college, she’ll have been to theAtom meeting this morning for sure. Let me go check and see if she got assigned to the Michael story.”

I could have stabbed them both with my spork.

“I am going to go sit down now,” I said from between gritted teeth. “With my boyfriend. You guys can come sit with me, but if you do, I don’t want you to be talking about this.In front of my boyfriend. Do you understand? Good.”

I kept my gaze locked on J.P. as I made my way across the caf to our table, determined not to glance in Lana’s direction. J.P., chatting with Boris, Perin, and Ling Su, noticed me coming, looked up, and smiled. I smiled back.

Still, out of the corner of my eye, I managed to see Lana hit her sister on the back of the head, grab her Miu Miu purse, and dig around in it.

Great. That could only mean one thing. Gretchen had press passes to tomorrow’s event.

“How’s it going?” J.P. asked me as I sat down.

“Great,” I lied.

Mia Thermopolis’s Big Fat Lie Number Five.

“Fantastic,” J.P. said. “Hey, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

I froze with my tofurkey burger halfway to my lips. Oh, God. Here?Now? He was going to ask me to the prom in the cafeteria, in front of everybody? This was J.P.’s idea of romantic?

No. It couldn’t be. Because J.P.’s made me dinner at his apartment before when his parents were out of town, and he’s pulled out all the stops…candles, jazz on the stereo, delicious fettuccini Alfredo, chocolate mousse for dessert. The guy knows romantic.

And he’s no slouch on Valentine’s Day, either. He got me a beautiful heart locket (from Tiffany, of course) with our initials entwined on it for our first, and a diamond journey necklace (to show how far we’d come from that first kiss outside my building) for our second.

Surely he wasn’t going to ask me to the prom as I was biting into a tofurkey burger in the cafeteria.

Then again…he thought he didn’t have to bother asking me to the prom at all. So…

Tina, overhearing J.P.’s question as she slid her tray down next to Boris’s, gasped.

Well, let’s face it. She would. This is another reason I can never tell her aboutRansom My Heart . She’d never be able to keep it to herself. Especially the steamier parts. She’d want to know how I researched them.

Then she recovered herself and said, “Oh? You have a question for Mia, J.P.?”

“Uh,” J.P. said. “Yeah…”

“How nice.” Tina tried not to look as smug as if she were about to give birth to the twentieth Duggar sibling. “Everybody? J.P. wants to ask Mia something.”

“Uh,” J.P. said, a light pink shade tingeing his cheeks as a hush fell over the cafeteria table and everyone looked at him expectantly. “I just wanted to ask what you were getting Principal Gupta and the rest of them as thank-you gifts for writing your letters of recommendation?”

Oh. Also, phew.

“I’m getting them each a set of six hand-blown Genovian crystal water goblets,” I said. “With the royal Genovian crest on them.”

“Oh,” he said, gulping. “I think my mom’s just going to get them each a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble.”

“I’m sure they’ll like that much better,” I said, feeling bad. Grandmère was always so over-the-top with her gift-giving.

“We’re giving them Swarovski crystal apples,” Ling Su and Perin said at the same time. This made them sound nerdier than they are; which they so totally aren’t. Well, anymore. They’d actually completely given up sitting with the Backpack Patrol, as J.P. refers to Kenny’s—I mean, Kenneth’s—gang, across the caf, who’d taken to traveling everywhere with their giant backpacks of books, even this late in the school year, knowing full well they’d already gotten into their colleges of choice (well, second choice). Some of them had so many books, in fact, they used wheelie suitcases to cart them around. It was like they’d never heard of using their lockers.

Lilly, who used to sit among them—untilLilly Tells It Like It Is took off and her lunch hour became too busy for her to spend it in the caf—with her multiple piercings and often variantly colored hair, looked like an exotic flower. I think they were all pretty sorry to see her go—although I’m not sure any of them but Kenny really noticed, seeing as how their heads were all buried in their Advanced Chem books.

“Well, that’s taken care of,” Lana announced, setting her tray down. “Two o’clock tomorrow, geek.”

She was addressing me. Geek is Lana’s pet name for me. I’ve learned she means it as a term of endearment.

“What’s at two o’clock tomorrow?” J.P. wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, just as Shameeka slid her tray down, too, and said, covering for me, “Mani-pedi appointments. Who’s got the Diet Cokes? Oh, thanks, Mia.”

“This is so lame.” Trisha took one of the Diet Cokes I’d bought, too. “Did I mention how lame this is? Ihave to tan.”

“What are they talking about?” J.P. asked Boris.

“Don’t ask,” Boris advised him. “Just ignore them, and maybe they’ll go away.”

And that was that. It was decided—sort of nonverbally, but more verbally after lunch was over and we were all walking to class and the guys were gone. Lana got press passes (two of them, one for a reporter, and one for a photographer) from her sister Gretchen for Michael’s donation of one of his CardioArms to Columbia.

Apparently they all think we’re going tomorrow (to them, two press passes = permission for the five of us to enter, in Lana Fantasy Land).

But the REAL fantasy is that they think I’m actually going to go, because no way am I setting foot anywhere near that place. I mean, nothing has changed—I still don’t want to see Michael—I stillcan’t see Michael…not sneaking in to see him on Lana Weinberger’s little sister’s high school newspaper’s press pass. I mean, that is insane. That’s like something out of a book—something that’s just not going to happen.

Ever.

God, Boris is really scraping away on that thing!

And Lilly isn’t even here. Which is no big surprise, she hasn’t been in G&T since her show got picked up by a television network in Seoul. She tapes every day during lunch and fifth period. They actually let her out of school to do this, and give her class credit and everything.

Which is cool. I guess she’s a huge star in Korea.

Well, I always knew she’d be a star.

For some reason I just always thought I’d be friends with her when it happened.

Well, things change, I guess.

 

Friday, April 28, French

Tina won’t stop texting me, even though I’m not texting back. (I don’t need a repeat performance of yesterday’s debacle.)

She wants to know what I’m going to wear tomorrow when we go to see Michael donate a CardioArm to Columbia’s Medical Center.

I wonder what it’s like to live in Tinaville.

I get the feeling it’s very shiny there.

 

Friday, April 28, Psychology

I finally texted Tina back that I’m not going tomorrow.

There has been radio silence ever since, so I’m just slightly suspicious about what’s going on between her and the rest of the gang.

It’s slightly restful, however, not to have my phone buzzing every five seconds.

Amelia—I still haven’t had your answerrrrrrr. I need you to disinvite twenty-ffiveeeee people to your party. The captain is telling me we won’t be able to set saillllllll with three hundred. Weeeeeeeeee need to cut it down to two seventy-five max. I think Nathan and Claire, Frank’s niece and nephew, can go, obviously. What about your mother? You don’t need her there, do you? She’ll understandddddd. And Frank, tooooooo. I’ll be waiting for your call. Clarisse, your grandmotherrrrrrr

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device

Oh myGod.

Major histocompatibility complex—MHC: Gene family found in most mammals. Believed to play an important role in mate selection through olfactory (scent) recognition. In studies, female college students asked to smell the unwashed T-shirts worn by male college students invariably chose ones worn by males possessing MHC that was entirely dissimilar to their own. This is believed to be due to the fact these males would make the most genetically desirable mates (pairing opposite MHC genes would create offspring with the strongest immune systems). The more geneticallydissimilar mates are to each other, the stronger the immune system of the offspring, a fact believed detected through the olfactory senses of the female of the species.