What am I going to do? When my dad sees that photograph, he is going to FLIP OUT. There is no way I will ever be able to explain that it wasn’t my fault. Maybe if I’d punched Josh in the stomach in front of all those cameras, maybe then my dad would believe I was an innocent bystander. . . .
But probably not.
I will never be allowed out of the house with a boy again, ever, for the rest of my natural life.
Uh-oh. I see shoes outside my stall. Somebody is talking to me.
It’s Tina. Tina wants to know if I’m all right. Somebody is with her.
Oh my God, I recognize those feet! It’s Lilly! Lilly and Tina both want to know if I’m all right!
Lilly is actually speaking to me again. Not criticizing me or complaining about my behavior. She is actually speaking to me in a friendly manner. She’s saying through the stall door that she’s sorry for laughing at my hair and that she knows she’s controlling and that she suffers from a borderline authoritarian personality disorder, and she says she’s going to make a concerted effort to stop telling everyone, especially me, what to do.
Wow! Lilly is admitting she did something wrong! I can’t believe it! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!
She and Tina want me to come out and hang out with them. But I told them I don’t want to. It would be too awkward, all of them with dates and me by myself like a big dope.
And then Lilly goes, “Oh, that’s okay. Michael’s here. He’s been hanging around by himself like a big dope all night.”
Michael Moscovitz came to a school event??? I can’t believe it!! He never goes anywhere, except to like lectures in quantum physics and stuff!!
I have got to see this for myself. I am going out there right now.
More later.
Sunday, October 19
I just woke up from the strangest dream.
In my dream, Lilly and I weren’t fighting anymore; she and Tina had become friends; Boris Pelkowski actually turned out to be not so bad when you got him away from his violin; Mr. Gianini said he was raising my nine week grade from an F to a D; I slow-danced with Michael Moscovitz; and Iran bombed Afghanistan, so there wasn’t a single picture of me and Josh kissing in any newspaper on the newsstand, since all the papers were filled with photos of war carnage.
But it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream at all, none of it! It had all really happened!
Because I woke up this morning with something wet on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that I was lying in the spare bed in Lilly’s room, and her brother’s sheltie was licking me all over my face. I mean it. I have dog spit all over me.
And I don’t even care! Pavlov can drool all over me if he wants to! I have my best friend back! I’m not going to flunk out of ninth grade! My dad isn’t going to kill me for kissing Josh Richter!
Oh, and I think Michael Moscovitz might like me!
I can hardly write for happiness.
Little did I know when I came out of the girls’ room last night with Lilly and Tina that all this happiness lay in store for me. I was morbidly depressed—yes, morbidly. Isn’t that a good word? I learned it from Lilly—over what had happened with Josh.
But when I came out of the girls’ room, Josh was gone. Lilly told me later that after I publicly humiliated him and then went storming off into the bathroom, Josh went on into the dance, not looking as if he cared too much. Lilly isn’t sure what happened after that, because Mr. G asked her and Tina to go and check on me (wasn’t that sweet of him?), but I have a feeling Lars might have used one of his special nerve-paralyzing holds on Josh, because the next time I saw him, Josh was slumped over at the Pacific Islander display table with his forehead resting on a model of Krakatoa. He didn’t move all night, either, but I just thought that was because of all the champagne he’d had to drink.
Anyway, Lilly and Tina and I joined Boris and Dave—who is really nice, even if he does go to Trinity—and Shameeka and her boyfriend, Allan, and Ling-Su and her date, Clifford, at this table they had snagged. It was the Pakistani table, with a display sponsored by the Economics Club, detailing how the market for maunds (a Pakistani unit of measurement) of rice was falling. We moved some of the maunds and sat there anyway, right on the tabletop, so we could see everything.
And then Michael suddenly appeared out of nowhere, looking crescent fresh—isn’t that a funny expression? I learned it from Michael—in the tux his mom made him get for his cousin Steve’s bar mitzvah. Michael really didn’t have anyone else to hang out with, since Principal Gupta ruled that the Internet is not a culture and therefore cannot have its own table, and so the Computer Club boycotted the Cultural Diversity Dance on principle.
But Michael didn’t seem to care what the Computer Club thought, and he’s the treasurer! He sat down next to me and asked if I was all right, and then we had fun for a while CracKing jokes about how all the cheerleaders sure don’t practice any cultural diversity, since they were all dressed in practically the same gown, a slinky black number by Donna Karan. Then somebody started talking about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and whether or not there’s caffeine in replicator coffee, and Michael insisted that the matter used to make the things that come out of the replicator is from refuse, which means maybe when you order an ice cream sundae it might be made out of urine, but with the germs and impurities extracted. And we were all getting kind of grossed out when the music changed, and a slow song came on, and everybody left the table to go and dance.
Except for me and Michael, of course. We just sat there amid the maunds of rice.