And they didn’t show up yesterday, when I was in the old-timey horse carriage with Michael. But I didn’t add that part out loud. Obviously.

“I just don’t get how sometimes they know where I’m going to be, and sometimes they don’t,” I went on. “I know Grandmère’s not tipping them off. She’s evil, but she’s notthat evil—”

J.P. didn’t say anything. He just kept holding me close and dancing.

“In fact,” I said. “They mostly only seem to show up when I’m with…you.”

“I know,” J.P. said. “It’s so annoying, isn’t it?”

Yeah. It is. Because it only started happening, really, when I started going out with J.P. My very first date with J.P., when we went to seeBeauty and the Beast together. That was the first time the press got a shot of us, coming out of the theater, looking like a couple, even though we weren’t.

I’d always wondered who’d called and told them we were there together. And every other subsequent date we’d gone on, many of which there’d been no way they could have known about in advance—like when we’d gone to Blue Ribbon Sushi the other night. How had they known about that, a casual sushi date around the corner from my house? I go out to eat around the corner from my house all the time, and the paps never show up.

Unless J.P. is there.

“J.P.,” I said, looking up at him in the blue and pink party lights. “Areyou the one who’s been calling the paps and telling them where they can find us?”

“Who, me?” J.P. laughed. “No way.”

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was that laugh…which sounded just slightly nervous. Maybe it was the fact that after all this time, he still hadn’t read my book. Maybe it was the fact that he’d put that sexy dancing scene in his play, for everyone to laugh at. Or maybe it was the fact that his character, J.R., seemed to want to be a prince so very, very badly.

But somehow, I just knew:

That “No way” was J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV’s Big Fat Lie Number One. Actually, make that Number Two. I think he was lying about the hotel room reservation, too.

I couldn’t stop staring at him, gazing down at me with that nervous smile on his lips.

This, I thought, wasn’t the J.P. I knew. The J.P. who didn’t like it when they put corn in his chili and who kept a creative writing journal that was a Mead composition notebook exactly like all of mine and who’d been in therapy for way longer than I had. This was some different J.P.

Except it wasn’t. This was the exact same J.P.

Only I knew him better now.

“I mean,” J.P. said, with a laugh. “Why would I do that? Call the paparazzi on myself?”

“Maybe,” I said, “because you like seeing yourself in the paper?”

“Mia,” he said, looking down at me with the same nervous smile on his face. “Come on. Let’s just dance. You know what? I heard a rumor we might get voted prom king and queen.”

“My foot hurts,” I said. This was a lie. But for once, I didn’t feel guilty about it. “These are new shoes. I think I have to sit down a minute.”

“Oh, no,” J.P. said. “I’ll go see if I can find you a Band-Aid. Stay here.”

So J.P. is looking for a Band-Aid.

And I’m trying to figure this out.

How could J.P.—J.P., who is so big and blond and good-looking, the guy with whom I have so much in common, the guy everyone liked so much better for me than Michael—be someone it turns out I may have nothing in common with at all?

It can’t be possible. Itcan’t be.

Except…what was Dr. Knutz talking about the other day?

His story about his horse, Sugar. The thoroughbred, who looked so good on paper, but in whose saddle he could never find a comfortable place? Dr. Knutz had to give up Sugar, because he never wanted to ride her, and it wasn’t fair to Sugar.

I get it now. I so get it.

Some people canseem perfect…everything about them can, on paper, be just right.

Until you get to know them.Really know them.

Then you find out, in the end, while they might be perfect to everyone else, they just aren’t right foryou.

On the other hand…

What’s so wrong about a guy who loves his girlfriend getting a hotel room for the two of them on prom night, months in advance? Oh, big crime.

So he screwed up with the play? If I ask him to, I’m sure he’d change it. I—

Oh my God. There’s Lilly.

She’s in black from head to toe. (Well, so am I, actually. Only somehow I don’t think I look like a trained assassin, the way she does.)

She’s heading for the ladies’ room.

Okay, I think this might constitute stalking. But I’m going in after her. She dated J.P. for six months.

If anyone will know if my boyfriend’s a great big phony, she will. Whether or not she’ll even speak to me is another story.

But Dr. Knutzdid say, when I figured out what the right thing to do was, I’d do it.

I really hope this is it….

 

Saturday, May 6, 11 p.m., the Waldorf-Astoria,

ladies’ room

Okay. I’m shaking. I have to stay in here until my knees stop trembling long enough for me to stand up again. For now I’m just going to sit here on this little velvet settee and try to write this down so it makes some kind of sense—

In any case…

I guess I finally know why Lilly was so mad at me for so long.

I walked into the bathroom and there she was putting bright red lipstick on in the mirror.

It looked exactly like blood.

She glanced at my reflection and sort of raised her eyebrows.

But I wasn’t going to back off, even though my heart was pounding.Grant me the courage to change the things I can.

I checked to make sure we were the only people in the room. We were. And then I went, to her reflection, before I could lose my nerve, “Is J.P. a total fake, or what?”

She very calmly put the lid back on her lipstick and slipped it into her evening clutch. Then she said with an expression of total disgust, turning around to look me in the eye, “Took you long enough.”

I won’t say it was like she plunged a knife into my chest, or anything dramatic like that. Because the part of me that used to think I loved J.P. had stopped thinking that as soon as I spilled the hot chocolate on Michael last week, and I realized that whole loving J.P. thing had just been wishful thinking. I mean, I guess Icould have trained myself to fall in love with J.P. eventually, if Michael Moscovitz had never come back from Japan and then been so nice to me and made me realize I’d never fallen out of love with him.

But that will never happen now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Lilly. I wasn’t mad, really. Too much time had passed—and water gone under the bridge—for me to be mad. I was just curious, more than anything.

“Oh, what,” Lilly said, letting out a sarcastic laugh, “you’rethe one who started going out with him the day he dumped me, practically—dumped me foryou , by the way.”

“He did not dump you for me,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not how it happened.”

“I beg your pardon,” Lilly said. “I was there, you were not. I think I would know. J.P. most assuredly dumped me because, as he said, and I quote, he was hopelessly in love with you. I didn’t mention that part, did I, the day I told you about our breakup?”

I stared at her, feeling color creep up my face. “No—”

“Well, that’s what he told me. That he was dumping me like a hot potato the minute it looked like things were over with you and Michael because now he, quote, had a chance with you, unquote. But I told him there was no way in hell my best friend would ever give him the time of day, because you would never do something like go out with the guy who’d broken my heart.” Her look of disgust deepened. “Oh, but…I guess I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”

I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe it.J.P.? J.P. had told Lilly he loved me…before he and I had even started going out? J.P. had dumped Lilly because I’d become available?

That was worse—way worse—than calling the paps on me, and telling them where I’d be having dinner.

Or getting a publisher to agree to print my book without even having read it.

“Don’t try to deny it, Mia,” Lilly went on, her upper lip curling. “Not five minutes after I told you about our breakup—our next class period, practically—I saw you two kissing.”

“That was a mistake!” I cried. “He turned his head at the last minute!” On purpose, I knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But then, I shouldn’t have been flinging my arms around boys in the hallway, anyway.

“Oh, and it was amistake that you two went out on a date the same night my brother left for Japan?” she asked, with a sneer.

“It wasn’t a date,” I said. “We went as friends.”

“That’s not how the press saw it,” Lilly said, shaking her head.

“The press?” I inhaled, a single, horrified breath as the truth finally sunk in…after twenty-one long months. “Oh, God. He called them that night. The night we went to seeBeauty and the Beast . That’s why the paparazzi showed up. J.P. called them himself.”

“Oh, NOW you finally realize it.” Lilly shook her head. Now that the blindfold had been lifted from my eyes at last, she’d stopped looking so disgusted. “He played us both. He only went out with me because it was a way to be closer to you…although I’m not entirely sure whatsleeping with me had to do with you—”

“Oh my God!” That’s when all the bones in my body turned into jelly and I had to sit down before I fell down. I collapsed onto one of the velvet couches the Waldorf-Astoria hotel staff had helpfully supplied for this purpose, and sunk my head into my hands.

Also, I would just like to add,I knew it! I knew they Did It! Way back in the beginning of eleventh grade, I knew it.