Meg Cabot - Forever Princess

So now Fat Louie just stays in my room (which Rocky is forbidden from entering because he messes with my Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures) when I’m not around to protect him.

And if I go off to college, that means Fat Louie’ll just be hiding in my room for four years with no one to sleep with him and scratch him under the ears the way he likes.

That’s just wrong.

Oh, sure, Momsays that he can move into her room (which Rocky is also forbidden from entering—unsupervised, anyway—because he’s obsessed with her makeup and once ate one of her entire Lancome Au Currant Velvet lipsticks, so she had to put one of those slippy things on her doorknob, too).

But I don’t know if Fat Louie will really like sleeping with Mr. G, who snores.

My phone! It’s J.P.

Thursday, April 27, 7:30 p.m., the loft

J.P. wanted to know how prom dress shopping went. I lied to him, of course. I was like, “Great!”

Our conversation slipped into the Twilight Zone from there.

“Did you get anything?” he wanted to know.

I couldn’t believe he was asking. I was truly shocked. You know, what with the wholehis having neglected to ask me to the prom thing, and all. Silly me, to assume we weren’t going.

I said, “No…”

My shock grew beyond all bounds when he then went on to say, “Well, when you do, you have to let me know what color it is, so I’ll know what color corsage to get you.”

Hello?

“Wait,” I said. “So…we’regoing to the prom?” J.P. actually laughed. “Of course!” he said. “I’ve had the tickets for weeks now.”

!!!!!!!!!

Then, when I didn’t laugh along with him, he stopped laughing, and said, “Wait. Weare going, aren’t we, Mia?”

I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I—

I love J.P. I do!

It’s just that for some reason, I don’t love the idea of going to the prom with J.P.

Only I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to explain that to him without hurting his feelings. Telling him that I thought the prom was lame, like I’d said to Tina, didn’t seem like it was going to cut it.

Especially since he’d just admitted he’d had the tickets for weeks. And those things aren’t cheap.

Instead I heard myself muttering, “I don’t know. You…you never asked.”

Which istrue . I mean, I was telling thetruth . Dr. K would have been proud of me.

But all J.P. said to this was, “Mia! We’ve been going out for almost two years. I didn’t think I had to ask.”

I didn’t think I had to ask?

I couldn’t believe he said this. Even if it’s true, well…a girl still wants to be asked! Right?

I don’t think I’m the girliest girl in the world—I don’t have fake nails (anymore) and I don’t diet or anything, even though I’m far from the skinniest girl for my height in our class. I’m WAY less girlie than Lana. And I’m aprincess.

But still. If a guy wants to take a girl to the prom, he shouldask her…

…even if they have been dating exclusively for almost two years.

Because she might not want to go.

Really, is it me? Am I asking too much? I don’t think so.

But maybe I am. Maybe expecting to be asked to the prom, rather than just assuming I’m going, is too much.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, I guess. J.P. must have realized from my silence that he’d said the wrong thing. Because finally, he said, “Wait…Are you saying that Ido have to ask?”

I said, “Um.” Because I didn’t know what to say! A part of me was like,Yeah! Yeah, you should have asked! But another part of me was like,You know what, Mia? Don’t rock the boat.You’re graduating in ten days. TEN DAYS. Just let it go.

On the other hand, Dr. K told me to start telling the truth. I’d already not lied to Tina today. I figured I might as well stop lying to my boyfriend, too. So…

“It’d have been nice if you’d asked,” I heard myself say, to my own horror.

J.P. did the strangest thing then:

He laughed!

Really. Like he thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“Isthat how it is?” he asked.

What wasthat supposed to mean?

I had no idea what he was talking about. He sounded a little bit crazy, which wasn’t at all like J.P. I mean, true, he does make me sit through a lot of Sean Penn films, because Sean Penn is his new favorite actor/director.

I have nothing against Sean Penn. I don’t even mind that he ended up divorcing Madonna. I mean, I still like Shia LaBeouf even though he chose to star inTransformers, which turned out to be a movie about robots from space.

That talk.

Which is just as bad as choosing to divorce Madonna, if you ask me.

Still. That doesn’t mean J.P. is crazy. Even though he was laughing like that.

“I know you bought tickets,” I said, going on as if I didn’t actually suspect him of a cognitive imbalance. “So I’ll pay you back for mine. Unless you want to take someone else.”

“Mia!” J.P. stopped laughing all of a sudden. “I don’t want to take anyone but you! Who else would I want to take?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just saying. It’s your senior prom, too. You should ask who you want.”

“I’m askingyou ,” J.P. said, sounding grumbly, which he used to do sometimes when he felt like going out, and I felt like staying in and writing. Only I couldn’t tell him that’s what I was doing, because of course he didn’t know I was writing a real book, and not just a paper for my senior project.

“Are you?” I asked, a little surprised. “You’re asking me right now?”

“Well, not right this minute,” J.P. said quickly. “I realize I may have fallen down in the romantic prom invitation department. I plan to do it right. So expect an invitation soon. A real invitation that you won’t be able to resist.”

I have to admit, my heart kind of sped up when I heard this. And not in a happy, oh-he’s-so-sweet kind of way, either. More in like a oh-no-what’s-he-going-to-do sort of way. Because I honestly couldn’t think of any way J.P. could ask me to the prom that could make dry chicken and bad music at the Waldorf at all appealing.

“Um,” I said. “You’re not going to do something that’s going to embarrass me in front of the whole school, are you?”

“No,” J.P. said, sounding taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

“Well,” I said. I knew I probably sounded insane, but I had to say it. So I said it fast, to get it out. “I saw this Lifetime movie once where to make a grand romantic gesture this guy wearing a full suit of armor rode up to this woman’s office building to propose to her on a white horse. You know, because he wanted to be her knight in shining armor? You aren’t going to ride up to Albert Einstein High wearing a suit of armor on a white horse and ask me to the prom, are you? Because that would truly be about nineteen levels of wrong. Oh, and the guy couldn’t find a white horse so he painted a brown one white, which is cruelty to animals and also, the white paint rubbed off on the inside of his jeans, so when he got off the horse to kneel down to propose, he looked really dumb.”

“Mia,” J.P. said, sounding annoyed. Which, really, I guess I couldn’t blame him. “I’m not going to ride up to Albert Einstein High in a suit of armor on a horse painted white to ask you to the prom. I think I can manage to think of something a little more romantic thanthat .”

For some reason this assertion didn’t make me feel any better, though.

“You know, J.P.,” I said. “Prom is pretty lame. I mean, it’s just dancing at the Waldorf. We can do that anytime.”

“Not with all our friends,” J.P. pointed out. “Right before we all graduate and go off to different colleges and possibly never see one another ever again.”