The only problem is, even though he’s tried out for all the shows AEHS has put on, J.P.’s never gotten a single part. He thinks the reason is because of the Drama Club’s cliquishness.

“I mean, I guess if I REALLY wanted a part in one of their shows,” he told me, “I could have started trying to get in with their group—you know, sit with them at lunch, hang out with them on the steps before school, fetch coffee from Ho’s for them, get my nose pierced, start smoking clove cigarettes, and all of that. But the truth is, I really can’t stand actors. They’re so self-absorbed! I just get tired of being the audience for their performance pieces, you know? Because that’s basically what it’s like when you talk to one. Like they’re doing a monologue just for you.”

“Well,” I said, thinking of all the stories I’d read about teen actors in Us Weekly. “Maybe because they’re insecure. Most teens are, you know. Insecure, I mean.”

I didn’t mention that, of all the teens J.P. had ever spoken to, I am probably the one who is the MOST insecure. Not that I don’t have good reason to be insecure. I mean, how many other teens do you know who have no earthly clue how to party and who have grandmas who try to blackmail them?

“Maybe,” J.P. said. “Or maybe I’m just too critical. The truth is, I don’t think I’m really the club-joining type. I’m sort of more of a loner. In case you didn’t notice.”

J.P. grinned at me after he said that, a sort of sheepish grin. I could sort of start to see what Tina and Lilly were saying, about him being cute. He IS sort of cute. In a big, teddy-bearish sort of way.

And he’s right about actors. I mean, judging by what I’ve seen of them on talk shows. They never shut up about themselves!

And okay, I guess the interviewer is asking. But still.

Oops, my turn again:

“Handmaid, fetch me the strongest grappa from the storerooms! I shall teach this rogue what it means to trifle with the house of Renaldo.”

Oh, God. Two hours until I get to see Michael. I have never needed to smell his neck more than I do now. Of course I can’t tell him what’s bothering me—the whole thing about my being such a non-party girl—but at least I can find some comfort standing next to him in his parents’ kitchen as I make dip, listening to the rumble of his deep voice as he tells me about chaos theory, or whatever.

PLEASE MAKE THIS END.

Oops, my turn again:

“In the name of my father, I dispatch you, Lord Alboin, to hell, where you belong!”

Yay! Joy and felicitations! Alboin is dead! Sing the closing song, then circle round for the finale! Yippee! We can all go home now! Or out on our dates!

No, wait. Grandmère has one last announcement:

“I’d like to thank you all for agreeing to join me on the extraordinary journey we are about to make together. Rehearsing and putting on Braid! should be one of the most creatively fulfilling projects any of you have ever attempted. And I think the rewards will be far more than we ever imagined we’d reap—”

Nice of her to look right at me as she says this last part. Why doesn’t she just come right out and say, And Amber Cheeseman won’t kill you for losing all the commencement money.

“But before we can come close to achieving those rewards, we are going to need to work, and work hard,” she went on. “Rehearsals will be daily, and will last late into the night. You will need to inform your parents not to expect you home for dinner all next week. And you will, of course, have your lines completely memorized by Monday.”

Her statement caused even more trepidatious murmuring. Rommel, disturbed by the obvious psychic pain in the room, started licking his nether regions compulsively, as he does during times of duress.

“I don’t think I can learn all the Italian words I have to know by then, Your Highness,” Perin said nervously.

“Nonsense,” Grandmère said. “Nessun dolore, nessun guadagno.”

But since nobody even knew what that meant, they were still freaking out.

Except J.P., apparently. He said, in his deep, calm, My Bodyguard voice, “Hey, guys, come on. I think we can do this. It’ll be kind of fun.”

It took a second or two for this to sink in. But when it finally did, it was Lilly, surprisingly, who said, “You know, J.P.’s right. I think we can do it, too.”

Which caused Boris to burst out with, “Excuse me, but weren’t you the one who was just complaining about how you have the first issue of the school’s new literary magazine to put to bed this weekend?”

Lilly chose to ignore that. J.P. looked kind of confused.

“Well, I don’t know about putting magazines to bed,” he said. “But I bet if we get together tomorrow morning, and maybe Sunday, too, and do a few more read-throughs, we’ll have most of our lines memorized by Monday.”

“Excellent idea,” Grandmère said, clapping her hands loudly enough to cause Señor Eduardo to open his eyes groggily. “That will give us plenty of time to work with the choreographer and vocal instructor.”

“Choreographer?” Boris looked horrified. “Vocal instructor? Just how much time are we talking about here?”

“As much time,” Grandmère said fiercely, “as it takes. Now, all of you go home and get some rest! I suggest eating a hearty supper to give you strength for tomorrow’s rehearsal. A steak, cooked medium rare, with a small salad and a baked potato with plenty of butter and salt is the ideal repast for a thespian who wants to keep up his or her strength. I will expect to see all of you here tomorrow morning at ten. And eat a big breakfast—eggs and bacon, and plenty of coffee! I don’t want any of my actors fainting from exhaustion on me! And good read-through, people! Excellent! You showed plenty of good, raw emotion. Give yourselves a round of applause!”

Slowly, one by one, we started to clap—only because, if we didn’t, it was clear Grandmère was never going to let us out of there.

Unfortunately, our applause woke the dozing maestro. Or director. Whatever he was.

“Tank you!” Señor Eduardo was now awake enough to think that we were clapping for something he did. “Tank you, all! I could not have done eet eef eet were not for you, however. You are all too kind.”

“Well.” J.P. waved to me. “See you tomorrow morning, Mia. Don’t forget to eat that steak! And that bacon!”

“She’s a vegetarian,” Boris, who still seemed sort of hostile about how much violin practice he was going to miss, reminded him.

J.P. blinked.

“I know,” he said. “That was a joke. I mean, after she freaked out about the meat in the vegetarian lasagna that one time, the whole SCHOOL knows she’s a vegetarian.”

“Oh, yeah?” Boris said. “Well, you’re one to talk, Mr. Guy Who Hates It When They—”

I had to slap my hand over Boris’s mouth before he could finish.

“Good night, J.P.,” I said. “See you tomorrow!” Then, after he’d left the room, I let Boris go, and had to wipe my hand on a napkin.

“God, Boris,” I said. “Drool much?”

“I have a problem with oversecretion of saliva,” he informed me.

“NOW you tell me.”

“Wow, Mia,” Lilly said, as we were on our way out. “Way to overreact. What is wrong with you, anyway? Do you like that J.P. guy or something?”

“No,” I said, offended. Geez, I mean, I’ve only been dating her brother for a year and a half. She should KNOW by now who I like. “But you guys could at least be nice to him.”

“Mia just feels guilty,” Boris observed, “because she killed him off in her short story.”

“No, I don’t,” I snapped.

But as usual, I was fully lying. I do feel guilty about killing J.P. in my story.

And I hereby swear I will never kill another character based on a real person in my fiction again.

Except when I write my book about Grandmère, of course.

Friday, March 5, 10 p.m., the Moscovitzes’ living room

Okay, these movies Michael is making me watch? They are so depressing! Dystopic science fiction just isn’t my thing. I mean, even the WORD “dystopic” bums me out. Because dystopia is the OPPOSITE of utopia, which means an idyllic or totally peaceful society. Like the utopian society they tried to build in New Harmony, Indiana, where my mom made me go one time when we were trying to get away from Mamaw and Papaw during a visit to Versailles (the one in Indiana).

In New Harmony, everyone got together and planned this, like, perfect city with all these pretty buildings and pretty streets and pretty schools and stuff. I know it sounds repulsive. But it’s not. New Harmony is actually cool.

A dystopic society, on the other hand, is NOT cool. There are no pretty buildings or streets or schools. It’s a lot like the Lower East Side used to be before all the rich dot-com geniuses moved down there and they opened all those tapas bars and three-thousand-dollar-a-month-maintenance-fee condos, actually. You know, one of those places where everything is pretty much gas stations and strip clubs, with the occasional crack dealer on the corner thrown in for good measure.

Which is the kind of society heroes in pretty much all the dystopic sci-fi movies we’ve seen tonight have lived.

Omega Man? Dystopic society brought on by mass plague that killed most of the population and left everybody (except Charlton Heston) a zombie.

Logan’s Run? Utopian society that turns out to be dystopic when it is revealed that in order to feed the population with the limited resources left to them after a nuclear holocaust, the government is forced to disintegrate its citizens on their thirtieth birthdays.

2001: A Space Odyssey is up next, but I seriously don’t think I can take it anymore.

The only thing making any of this bearable is that I get to snuggle up next to Michael on the couch.