Everything was going to be okay. No one had to know I’d spent a big chunk of yesterday making out with my ex-boyfriend in an old-timey horse carriage. Except my ex-boyfriend and bodyguard and the horse-carriage driver.

Who I really, really hoped wouldn’t turn out to have recognized me and gone running to TMZ about it.

I tried on a bunch of Sebastiano’s dresses and did a little mini fashion show for Grandmère, Mom, Mr. G, Rocky, Lars, Sebastiano, and Ronnie from next door, who’d come over (and kept going, “Girl, you lookpop pin’ fresh!” and, “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown since you were just a knock-kneed little thing in overalls and Ralph Nader buttons!”).

In the end, everyone agreed on this short tight black lace kind of retro eighties cocktail number, which isn’t very princessy or very promlike, but sort of suited the fact that I’m a girl who yesterday totally cheated on her boyfriend (even though, of course, nobody knows that but me and Lars, and possibly the carriage driver).

If kissing counts as cheating. Which technically I really don’t think it does. Especially if it’s with your ex.

We won’t even get into the below-the-neck fondling part.

So now I’m just waiting for J.P. to show and pick me up. And then we’ll be off to the Waldorf to fulfill all my prom night dreams of rubbery chicken and dancing to lame music. Just like I always said I didn’t want to be doing tonight. Yay! I can so wait.

Wait, someone’s knocking on the door to my room. That can’t be…Oh. It’s Mom.

 

Saturday, May 6, 6:30 p.m., the loft

I should have known Mom wouldn’t let me go off to as momentous an occasion as my senior prom without a meaningful speech. She’s given me one at every other turning point in my life. Why would the prom be any exception?

This one was about how just because I’ve been going out with J.P. for almost two years, I shouldn’t feelobligated to do anything Idon’t feel like doing . That boys sometimes put pressure on girls, claiming that they haveneeds , and that if girls really loved them they’d help them fulfill those needs, but that boys won’t really explode or go insane if those needs aren’t met.

Not that J.P. is that kind of boy, Mom hastened to explain. But you never know. He might turn into one. The prom does funny things to boys.

I had to try really hard to keep a straight face the whole time she was talking, because I took Health in tenth grade so I already know boys won’t explode if they don’t have sex. There was also the small fact that what she was talking about was SO NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN IN A MILLION YEARS.

Except, of course, the day before yesterday, it actually kind of sort of was, since having sex with J.P. after the prom had been my idea in the first place.

So, she did have a point. Not, of course, that I was going to have sex with himanymore . At least, if there was the slightest chance that I could get out of it, which, of course, there was. By just saying no. Which I had every intention of doing.

Although I really didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

I really wished I could ask her how I could do that, but then, of course, she’d know I’d been thinking about Doing It, and there was no way on God’s green earth I was bringing THAT up, even though, of course, she was.

Then Mom went on to say that the prom does funny things to girls, too, and that although she knew that I’m a very different kind of girl thanshe’d been whenshe’d been a teen (back in the eighties, when no one had ever heard of abstinence, and Mom had lost her virginity at the age of fifteen to a boy who’d later gone on to marry a Corn Princess), she hoped that if I got carried away tonight—though she’d prefer it if I didn’t—I’d at least practice safe sex.

“Mo-o-om,” I said, cringing with embarrassment. Because this is the only appropriate response to such a statement.

“Well,” Mom said. “Give us parents some credit, Mia. When you come straggling home after breakfast the day after the prom, we all know where most of you have been, and it isn’t an all-night bowling alley.”

Busted!

“Mom,” I said, in a different voice. “I—er—uh—okay. Thanks.”

Thank GOD the buzzer just went off. Here he is.

And here I go.

Saved by the bell.

Literally.

Or not.

I really don’t know, actually.

I can do this. I can totally do this.

 

Saturday, May 6, 9 p.m., the Waldorf-Astoria, ladies’ room

I can’t do this.

Don’t get me wrong, J.P. is being totally sweet. He even got me a corsage—just like he said he would—to wear on my wrist.

Fortunately Grandmère remembered to get J.P. a boutonniere (I never thought I’d be so grateful to her), since I completely forgot. Mom got a lot of pictures of me pinning it onto his lapel.

Which wasn’t too embarrassing, or anything.

I guess shecan be like normal moms, when she wants to.

Anyway, we got here—I managed to act pretty normal on the ride over, not giving away that I’d been making out with my ex-boyfriend yesterday—and the room is beautiful. The Waldorf-Astoria ballroom is gorgeous, with its huge high ceilings and lusciously set, foofy tables and sumptuous decor and thick carpets. The prom committee outdid themselves with the welcome signs and the AEHS memorabilia and the DJ and whatnot.

And J.P. istotally into it. I mean, I thoughtI used to be into it, back when I was a freshman and I lived and breathed prom,prom , PROM!

But J.P.loves it. He wants to dance every single dance. He ate every bit of his chicken (rubbery, just as I suspected) and he ate mine, too (I’m a flexatarian, but notthat flex). He brought his digital camera, and he’s taken 8,000 pictures—we’re all at a big table together, Lana and her date (a Westpointer, in full uniform), and Trisha and Shameeka with theirs, and Tina and Boris, and Perin and Ling Su and some guys they dug up somewhere for the benefit of their parents. Every five minutes, J.P. is like, “Smile!”

Which isn’t so bad. But as we were coming in, he made me stop and pose for the paparazzi with him outside the hotel (which…I’m trying to understand. I mean, first Blue Ribbon…then my party…then his play…now the prom. Is it just me or is it like TMZ has LoJack on my boyfriend?).

But that’s not the worst part. Not by a long shot. Oh, no. The worst part is, the boys at the table were all bragging about what hotel rooms they’d gotten for after prom (which, no offense, but except for J.P. and maybe Boris, I happen to know the GIRLS all made the hotel room reservations), and showing off their keys, and J.P. whipped his Waldorf key out like it was nothing—right in front of everybody.

I wanted to die. I mean, I don’t even know Lana’s, Trisha’s, and Shameeka’s dates! Can we not show alittle discretion? Especially since—

Wait a minute.

Howdid J.P. get a room at the Waldorf when Tina said the hotel was sold out so many weeks ago? And J.P. only called this past week?

 

Saturday, May 6, 10 p.m., Waldorf-Astoria, table ten

I just marched back up to our table and asked J.P. about the hotel reservation.

And he told me, “Oh, I called, and they had a room. It was no problem. Why?”

But when I asked Tina what she thought about it later, after J.P. had gone to get me some punch, she said, “Well, I guess…maybe…they had a cancellation?”

But wouldn’t they have had a waiting list?

And how could J.P. have been at the top of the waiting list, callingthat day ?

Something just didn’t seem right about his answer. It’s not that I don’t trust J.P. But that…that seemed weird to me.

So I went to my source for all evil and duplicitous scheming (now that Lilly is basically out of my life): Lana.

She stopped sucking face with her date long enough to go, “Duh. He must have made the reservationmonths ago. He was obviously planning on getting with you tonight all along. Now go away, can’t you see I’m busy?”

But that can’t possibly be true. Because J.P. and I never even discussed the possibility of having sex tonight—until I texted him about it the other day. We’ve never even gotten to second base before! Why would he assume I’d want to have sex on prom night? He didn’t evenask me to go to the prom until last week. I mean, isn’t making a reservation for a hotel room on our prom night without even having asked me to go to the prom a little bit…presumptuous?

So. Yeah. I started freaking out. Just a little. About that. I mean, could J.P. really have been planning, all this time, for us to have sex tonight? When we’ve never eventalked about it?

The thing is…I can tell by his play and all that he’s planning on marrying me and becoming a prince someday. He even called his playA Prince Among Men . So…it’s not like he doesn’t plan for the future. He’s even gotten me a gigantic ring.

And maybe it isn’t an engagement ring.

But it’s the next closest thing.

And that’s not all. When we were dancing just now, I said, just casually commenting, really, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about since my close call with the carriage ride yesterday, “J.P., do you think it’s weird how everywhere you and I go together, the paparazzi show up? Like tonight, for instance?”

And J.P. said, “Well, it’s good press for Genovia, don’t you think? Your grandmother’s always saying every time you appear in the papers, it’s like a free tourism ad for your country.”

And I said, “I guess. But it’s just strange because they show up so randomly. Like when I went to Applebee’s the other night with Mamaw and Papaw, I was terrified the paps were going to show up and get a shot of me. And that would have ruined Dad’s chances in the election. Can you imagine if TMZ or whoever had gotten a shot of me eating in an Applebee’s? But they didn’t.”