Wow! FINALLY someone who gets it! Maybe J.P. isn’t that bad after all. I mean, it’s true he dumped Lilly—and at SCHOOL, of all places.

But he seems to really have his priorities straight.

I just hope that you and I can still be friends. I wouldn’t want you to hold my breaking up with Lilly against me. I would hate for that to affect OUR friendship. Because I do consider you a close friend, Mia…one of the best I’ve ever had.

Oh my gosh! That is so sweet!

Thanks, J.P.! I think of you that way, as well. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re on my side in all of this, and not Michael’s. So many boys WOULD take his side, I think. They just don’t seem to understand that your virginity is the most precious gift you have to give to your one true love. If you waste it on someone you don’t even care about, then you have nothing to give the person you DO care about when the time comes.

Exactly. That’s why I’ve hung on to mine.

!!!! J.P. is a virgin!!!!!

Wow. He and I really DO have a lot in common.

Also…this means that Tina is wrong: He and Lilly never Did It!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not going to tell Lilly I know the truth, though. She’s had enough disappointments for one day. I’ll let her have the fun of stringing me along for a bit longer. It’s the least I can do, considering it’s MY fault she and J.P. broke up.

I just really hope she never realizes this.

Friday, September 10, Precalc

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Did what just happened really happen? Or did I just imagine it?

It CAN’T have happened. Because it’s too weird to actually have taken place.

Except…except I think it really did!

I’m going to throw up. I really am.Why did I eat that bacon cheeseburger for lunch?

My fingers are trembling so much I can barely write this…but I have to get it down somehow…okay, here goes:

Now I know what Michael meant when he said he was going tocome by and try to explain. He meant he was going to come to ALBERT EINSTEIN HIGH SCHOOL.

And walk up to the door to seventh period Chemistry just as I was coming out with J.P. Only at first I didn’t notice him. Michael, I mean.

At least, not until after J.P.—who I’m sure hadn’t noticed Michael either—went, “Friends?” to me, and I said, “Of course!” and then he said, “Hug?”

And I was like, “Why not?” And gave him one.

And I was so—I don’t know. MOVED by how sad J.P. was, on account of breaking up with Lilly, and all—that the next thing I knew, I was KISSING J.P.

I only meant to kiss him on the cheek. But he moved his head. And so I ended up kissing him on the lips.

Not like French, or anything. And only for a second.

Still. I kissed him. On the lips.

It wouldn’t have been any big deal—I’m sure it wouldn’t—if it hadn’t been for the fact that when I took my arms down from around his neck and turned around—all embarrassed, because I HADN’T meant to kiss him. Or at least, not exactly—there was Michael.

Just standing there in the middle of the crowded hallway, looking stunned.

So many things went through my head when I turned around and saw Michael standing there, staring at me. Happiness, at first, because I’m always happy when I see Michael. Then pain, when I remembered what he did to me, and how we’re broken up now. Then bewilderment, over what on earth he was doing at a school he already graduated from.

Then I realized he was thereto try to explain , like he’d texted.

And then I saw his expression, and saw his gaze dart from my face to J.P.’s—poor J.P., who was standing there still as a statue, the hand he’d put around my waist when I’d stood on my tiptoes to kiss him still up in the air, like he’d forgotten how to move, or something!—and back again.

And I knew EXACTLY what he was thinking.

Then all I felt was confused. Because Michael had to think—well, that there was something going on between me and J.P.

But it wasn’t true, of course.

“Michael,” I said.

But it was too late. Because he was alreadyturning around and walking away .

Walking away, like he’d suddenly realized he’d made a huge, colossal mistake in coming to see me at all!

I couldn’t believe it! Apparently, I don’t even mean enough to him to stay to try to hash it out with me! He didn’t even stay to punch J.P. in the face for scamming on his girl!

I guess because I’m not actually his girl anymore.

Also, I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. I mean, when Michael saw me sexy dancing with J.P. at that party he had last year, he never said anything about it.

But he hadn’t completely ignored me altogether afterward, either, like he’s doing now.

Oh, God. I can’t even think about it. I thought writing about it would help, but it hasn’t. My fingers are STILL shaking as I write this. What’s happening to me? My stomach is really upset, too. It can’t be the cheeseburger; that was hours ago…plus the nurse gave me those antacids…

WHY didn’t he SAY ANYTHING? I WAS KISSING ANOTHER MAN. You’d have thought he’d at least have said SOMETHING, even if it was only, “Good-bye, forever.”

Good-bye, forever. Oh, God. He’s leaving tonight. Forever.

And he looked so GOOD standing there, so tall and strong, with his neck all freshly shaved (I think. I didn’t exactly get an opportunity to go up to it and check. Or take a sniff. Oh, God! How I miss the smell of Michael’s neck! If I smelled it right now, I bet I’d stop shaking, and my stomach would stop rolling around).

He looked so shocked—so hurt—

Oh, God. I think I really am going to be sick….

Friday, September 10, the limo on the way to the Four Seasons

I was sick in the nurse’s office. Lars got me there just in time.

I don’t know what came over me. I was just sitting there in Precalc, writing in my journal, and all of a sudden, I pictured the shocked expression on Michael’s face when I turned around from kissing J.P., and I started feeling sweaty all over, and Lars, who was sitting next to me, went, “Princess? Are you all right?” in alarm, and I said, “No,” and the next thing I knew, Lars had me by the arm and out the door and over the sink in the nurse’s office, where I threw up what looked like the entire bacon cheeseburger I scarfed down at lunch.

Nurse Lloyd took my temperature and said it was normal but that there’s a stomach flu that is going around, and that I probably have it. She said I couldn’t stay at school, or I’d infect everyone.

So she called the loft, but no one was there. I could have told her that. Fridays this semester Mr. G only has a half day, so he went home early. He and Mom probably headed out to New Jersey to catch whatever was showing at the five-dollar matinee, and then stop at Sam’s Club to stock up on diapers for Rocky, their half-day tradition.

So Lars decided to take me to Grandmère’s, since he didn’t think I should be alone in the loft in my current state.

Apparently, being ill in the company of Grandmère is preferable to being ill in my own comfy bed. I fail to see the logic in this, but I was too weak to protest.

I didn’t have the heart to tell Nurse Lloyd that what I have isn’t the flu. What I have is too-much-meat-after-a-lifetime-of-abstaining-from-it-because-my-boyfriend-gavehis-Precious-Gift-to-someone-else-and-is-moving-to-Japan-tonight syndrome.

But, just like with the flu, there’s no pill you can take to make that go away.

Especially when it’s accompanied by I-just-kissed-my-best-friend’s-ex-boyfriend-and-my-ex-boyfriend-saw-me-do-it-ism.

The saddest part of all is that the first person I wanted to call when I realized I was being booted out of school on account of being sick was…Michael. Because even just talking to Michael has always made me feel better.

But I can’t call him. I can never call him again. Because what would I even SAY to him, after what just happened?

It’s a really good thing this limo comes with its own barf bags.

Friday, September 10, 3 p.m., the Four Seasons

Grandmère is the worst person to hang around with when you aren’t feeling well. Being a cylon, she, of course, never feels sick—or at least, never remembers what it was like when she DID feel sick—and is completely lacking in compassion for anyone feeling out of sorts.

Worse, she is WAY excited that Michael and I broke up.

“I always knew That Boy was trouble,” she said, all happily, when I explained what I was doing, showing up at her suite in the midafternoon, supposedly infected with a highly contagious disease.I’m not sick, Grandmère , I’d said.I’m just sad.

Because, the problem is, I haven’t stopped loving Michael. So instead of agreeing with her that he was trouble, I was just like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and went and sat on her couch, pulling Rommel onto my lap for comfort.

Yes. That’s how far gone I was. I was looking to ROMMEL, a toy poodle, for comfort.

“Oh, there’s nothing inherently WRONG with Michael,” Grandmère went on. “Except that he’s a commoner. Well, tell me. What did he do? It must have been something particularly heinous for you to have taken off That Necklace.”

My hand went to the empty spot at my throat. My necklace! I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been missing it—how strange it felt not to have it on—until just then. Michael’s necklace had been a bit of a bone of contention between Grandmère and me. She always wanted me to put on the Genovian royal jewels for balls and functions I attended, but I would never take Michael’s necklace off, and let’s just say Grandmère isn’t a fan of the layered necklace look.

Well, I guess a silver snowflake on a chain doesn’t exactly go with a diamond-and-sapphire choker.