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Michael: Lilly, don’t you ever shut up?
Judith: I love ice-skating! Although I’m not very good at it.
And she certainly isn’t. Judith is such a bad skater, she had to hold on to both of Michael’s hands while he skated backwards in front of her, just to keep from falling flat on her face. I don’t know which astonished me more: that Michael can skate backwards, or that he didn’t seem to mind having to tow Judith all around the rink. I mean, I may not be able to clone a fruit fly, but at least I can remain upright unaided in a pair of ice skates.
Kenny, however, seemed to really think Michael and Judith’s method of skating was way preferable to skating the old-fashioned way—you know, solo—so he kept coming up and trying to get me to let him tow me around the way Michael was towing Judith.
And even though I was all, “Duh, Kenny, I know how to skate,” he said that that wasn’t the point. Finally, after he’d bugged me for like half an hour, I gave in, and let him hold both my hands as h
e skated in front of me, backwards.
Only the thing is, Kenny isn’t very good at skating backwards. I can skate forward, but I’m not good enough at it that if someone is wobbling around in front of me, I can keep from crashing into him if he falls down.
Which was exactly what happened. Kenny fell down, and I couldn’t stop, so I crashed into him, and my chin hit his knee and I bit my tongue and all this blood filled up my mouth, and I didn’t want to swallow it so I spat it out. Only unfortunately it went all over Kenny’s jeans and onto the ice, which clearly impressed all of the tourists standing along the railings around the rink, taking pictures of their loved ones in front of the enormous Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, since they all turned around and started taking pictures of the girl spitting up blood on the ice below, a truly New York moment.
And then Lars came shooshing over—he is a champion ice-skater, thanks to his Nordic upbringing; quite a contrast to his bodyguard training in the heart of the Gobi desert—picked me up, looked at my tongue, gave me his handkerchief and told me to keep pressure on the wound, and then said, “That’s enough skating for one night.”
And that was it. Now I’ve got this bloody gouge in the tip of my tongue, and it hurts to talk, and I was totally humiliated in front of millions of tourists who’d come to look at the stupid tree at stupid Rockefeller Center, not to mention in front of my friends and, worst of all, Judith Gershner, who it turns out also got accepted early decision at Columbia (great, the same school Michael’s going to in the fall), where she will be pre-med, and who advised me that I should go to the hospital, as it seemed likely to her that I might need stitches. In my tongue. I’m lucky, she said, I didn’t bite the tip of it off.
Lucky!
Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you how lucky I am: I’m so lucky that while I lie here in bed writing this, with no one but my twenty-five-pound cat, Fat Louie, to keep me company (and Fat Louie only likes me because I feed him), the boy I’ve been in love with since like forever is up at midtown right now with a girl who knows how to clone fruit flies and can tell if wounds need stitches or not.
One good thing about this tongue, though: if Kenny was thinking about moving on to Frenching, we totally can’t until I heal. And that could, according to Dr. Fung—whom my mom called as soon as Lars brought me home—take anywhere from three to ten days.
Yes!
TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE HOLIDAY SEASON IN NEW YORK CITY
Tourists who come in from out of town in their giant sports utility vehicles and try to run you over at the crosswalks, thinking they are driving like aggressive New Yorkers. Actually, they are driving like morons. Plus there is enough pollution in this city. Why can’t they just take public transit, like normal people?
Stupid Rockefeller Center tree. They asked me to be the person who throws the switch to light it this year, as I am considered “New York’s own Royal” in the press, but when I told them how cutting down trees contributes to the destruction of the ozone layer, they rescinded their invitation and had the mayor do it instead.
Stupid Christmas carols blaring from outside all the stores.
Stupid ice-skating with stupid boys who think they can skate backwards when they can’t.
Pressure to buy stupid “meaningful” gifts for everyone you know.
Final exams.
Stupid lousy New York weather. No snow, just cold, wet rain, every single day. Whatever happened to a white Christmas? I’ll tell you: Global warming. You know why? Because everybody keeps driving SUVs and cutting down trees!
Stupid manipulative Christmas specials on TV.
Stupid manipulative Christmas commercials on TV.
Mistletoe. This stuff should be banned. In the hands of adolescent boys, it becomes a societally approved excuse to demand kisses. This is sexual harassment, if you ask me.
Plus all the wrong boys have it.
Sunday, December 7
Just got back from dinner at Grandmère’s. All of my efforts to get out of having to go—even my pointing out that I am currently suffering from a perforated tongue—were in vain.
And this one was even worse than usual. That’s because Grandmère wanted to go over my itinerary for my trip to Genovia, which, by the way, looks like this:
Sunday, December 21
