Meg Cabot - Princess on the Brink

Tina was staring at her boyfriend in shock. “Boris! That’s the most horrible thing to say! How could yousay that?”

Boris didn’t get it, though. He just shrugged and went, “What? It’s the truth. Everyone knows it.”

“My brother isn’t going to fall in love with someone else,” Lilly said, in a bored voice, from where she sat farther down the table, across from J.P. “Okay? He’s completely besotted with Mia.”

“Ha,” Tina said, giving Boris a poke with her straw. “See?”

“I am only telling it the way I’ve experienced it,” Boris said. “Maybe Michael won’t fall in love with a clarinetist. But Mia will.”

“BORIS!” Tina looked outraged. “What on EARTH would make you say that???”

“Yeah, Boris,” Lilly said, looking at him like he was a bug she’d found in her hummus. “What’s this thing you’ve apparently got for clarinetists? I thought you considered woodwinds to be beneath you.”

“I am merely stating a fact,” Boris said, putting down his fork with a bang to illustrate his seriousness. “Mia is only sixteen years old. And they aren’t married. Michael shouldn’t think that he can just go off to a foreign country and that she is going to wait for him. It isn’t fair to her. She should be allowed to move on with her life, date other people, and have fun, not sit in her room every Saturday night for a year until he gets back.”

I saw Shameeka and Ling Su exchange glances. Ling Su even made an “Oops, he might actually be right” face.

Tina didn’t think he was right, though.

“Are you saying that if you got a job as first violin with the London Philharmonic, you wouldn’t want me to wait for you?” she asked her boyfriend.

“Of course I wouldwant you to wait,” Boris explained. “But I wouldn’t ASK you to. It wouldn’t be fair. But I know you WOULD wait, anyway, because that’s the kind of girl you are.”

“Mia’s that kind of girl, too!” Tina said decidedly.

“No,” Boris said, gravely shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”

“That’s okay, Boris,” I said quickly, before Tina’s head exploded. “I WANT to sit in my room every Saturday night until Michael gets back.”

Boris looked at me like I was nuts. “You DO?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do. Because I love Michael and if I can’t be with him, I’d rather not be with any boy.”

Boris just shook his head sadly.

“That’s what all the couples in my orchestra say,” he said. “And eventually, one of them gets tired of sitting in their room. Next thing you know, they’ve hooked up with a clarinetist. There’salways a clarinetist.”

This was very disconcerting. I was sitting there, feeling the same panic rising I feel every time I think of Michael’s leaving—just three more days! Three more days until he’s gone—when I happened to notice that J.P. was looking at me.

And then when I met his gaze, he smiled at me. And rolled his eyes. As if to say, “Listen to the crazy Russian violinist! Isn’t he silly?”

And suddenly, the panic disappeared, and I felt all right again.

I smiled back and, reaching for my falafel, said, “I think Michael and I will be okay, Boris.”

“Ofcourse they will,” Tina said. And then Boris yelped. It was clear Tina had kicked him beneath the table.

I hope she left a bruise.

Wednesday, September 8, G & T

So Lilly didn’t even give me twenty-four hours to recover from the blow her brother delivered. No, she started harping on the student government campaign again during G and T.

“Listen, POG,” she said. “I know you were the only person nominated for student council president, but you can’t win if at least fifty percent of the class doesn’t vote for you.”

“Who else are they going to vote for?” I wanted to know. “Especially if no one else is running?”

“Write-ins,” Lilly said. “Themselves. Who knows? You could end up being beaten by Lana anyway, even though she’s technically not running. You know her little sister just entered ninth grade, right?”

This information was meaningless to me. I mean, on account of my head being completely full of the fact that MY BOYFRIEND IS MOVING TO JAPAN FOR A YEAR (or more).

“Did you hear me, Mia?” Lilly was peering at me all concernedly over her student government binder. “Gretchen Weinberger is exactly like her older sis…only with a bigger chip on her shoulder. Think of that documentary we saw on MTV,True Life , on ’roid rage, and you’ll have a clear picture. Gretchen could undoubtedly rally the entire ninth grade against you if she wanted to. And, if you’ve gotten any kind of look at them, you can clearly see this freshman class is the most apathetic bunch of bottom-feeders that have ever walked the planet. I actually heard one of them insisting that global warming is all a myth because Michael Crichton said so in that pathetic excuse for a book of his.”

I just looked at her some more. Was Gretchen Weinberger the clone—that slightly smaller version of Lana I’d seen laughing in the hallway over the elder Weinberger’s witticism concerning my haircut and Neverland? Probably. I’d just assumed at the time she was another Lana Wannabe. It makes sense she’s her sister.

“But that idiot’s remarks about that anti-science schlock-meister Crichton gave me an idea,” Lilly went on. “This is a generation that’s pretty much been raised on fear—fear of feminists, who as we all know are out to destroy family values—ha, ha—fear of terrorists, fear of getting a bad SAT score and then not getting into Yale or Princeton and therefore being a failure and having to go to some less well-known school from which they might—gasp—have to get an entry-level job after graduation making one hundred thousand dollars a year instead of one hundred and five thousand dollars a year. I say we play on these fears, and use them to our advantage.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked. Not that I cared. “And also, technically, we’re the same generation as Lana’s little sister. I mean, we’re older than she is. But she’s still our generation.”

“No, she isn’t,” Lilly said, with a gleam in her eye—a gleam I did not trust for one second. “She was born just late enough not to have been cognitively aware ofParty of Five , and that makes us generationally separate. And I think I know EXACTLY where their weak spot is. I’m working on it. I should have everything ready by tomorrow. Don’t worry, POG. They’ll be BEGGING you to be their student body president by the time I’m done with them.”

“Wow,” I said. “Well, thanks. But, see, the thing is, Lilly…I don’t think I want to run for student body president this year.”

Lilly just blinked at me. “What?”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“It’s just…well, you know what I got in math on my practice PSAT. And I have Precalculus AND Chemistry this year. I swear to God, it’s only been one day, and I don’t have the slightest idea what anybody is talking about in either of those courses. I mean, not even A LITTLE. I really think I need to concentrate on school work this year. I just don’t think I’m going to have time to run the school. Not with all that and princess stuff, too.”

Lilly raised one eyebrow. I hate when she does this. Because she knows how and I don’t.

“This is because of my brother, isn’t it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Because,” Lilly said, “I mean, if anything, now that he’s leaving, you’re going to have MORE time on your hands. Not less.”

“Yes,” I said, with some asperity. “But also, now that he’s leaving, I’m not going to have anybody to help me with my Precalc and Chem homework. I’m going to have to get a tutor or something. And tutors, unlike Michael, aren’t totally willing to come over and help me with a worksheet at ten o’clock on a Wednesday night after I’ve been at a student council meeting and then some state dinner over at the Genovian embassy.”