Meg Cabot - Forever Princess

We’re all just sitting here waiting for the phone call.

This is excruciating.

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

Still no word from Dad.

I finally told them all I had to go. Get ready, I mean. Paolo was coming by with all his equipment to give me the perfect blowout. Plus, I had to shave my legs and do all the other stuff you have to do to get beautified before an evening out…purifying mud mask, Crest Whitestrips, Bioré pore strips, etc. (I didn’t even want to think about what might be coming after my evening out tonight.)

Every twenty minutes or so I poked my head out of my room and asked if they’d heard anything, though.

But Dad didn’t call. I can’t tell if this is a good sign or a bad sign. The vote shouldn’t be this close. Should it?

Finally I was ready to choose a dress. I had my hair done—Paolo put the front up in the diamond and sapphire clips Grandmère had given me for my birthday, but left the back hanging loose in a sort of flip—and everything was clean and moisturized and polished and shaved and smelled nice.

Not that it matters, really, because I’ve already decided no one is going to get close enough to inspect any of those parts of me. I mean, I have enough problems as it is—I don’t need sex compounding them.

Actually, I was trying very hard not to think about what was going to happenafter the prom—or what I was getting myself into. I mean, the whole after-prom thing just had this big DO NOT ENTER sign over it in my brain. I had decided the only way to get through this night was to take it—literally—one minute at a time. I had even e-mailed J.P. back and said, “Thanks!” for his Sunburst Publishing offer.

I didn’t say that I’d already taken the other offer, or decided against taking his, or anything like that. It just didn’t seem worth arguing about. We were going to have a nice, worry-free evening at our senior prom, I’d decided.

Because I owed him that much, at least.

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!”