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This party was such a bad idea. I am so not in a party mood. What was I even thinking, having a party? I AM AN UNPOPULAR NERD PRINCESS!!!!! UNPOPULAR NERD PRINCESSES SHOULD NOT HAVE PARTIES!!!!!!!!! NOT EVEN FOR THEIR UNPOPULAR NERD FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!
No one is going to come. No one is going to come, and I’m going to end up sitting here all night with the twinkling Christmas lights and the stupid Queen Amidala streamers and the Cheetos and the Coke and Michael’s mix, BY MYSELF.
Oh, God, the buzzer just went off. Someone is here. Please God, give me the strength to get through this night. Give me the strength of Uli, Kari, Tracey, Marta, that dental-patient lady, Mimi, and that flight attendant. Please, that’s all I ask of you. Thanks.
Sunday, May 4, 2 a.m.
Well. That’s it. It’s over. My life is over.
I would like to thank all of those who stood by me during the hard times: my mother, back before she became a two-hundred-pound quivering mass of bladderless hormones; Mr. G, for attempting to salvage my GPA; and Fat Louie for just being, well, Fat Louie, even if he is totally useless when compared to the animals on Miracle Pets.
But nobody else. Because everybody else I know is obviously part of some nefarious plot to drive me to madness, just like Bertha Rochester.
Take Tina, for example. Tina, who shows up at my party and, first thing, grabs me by the arm and drags me into my room, where everybody is supposed to be leaving their coats, and tells me, “Ling Su and I have got it all worked out. Ling Su’ll keep your mom and Mr. G busy, and then I will announce the game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. When it’s your turn, get Michael in the closet and start kissing him and when you’ve reached the height of passion, ask him about the prom.”
“Tina!” I was really annoyed. And not just because I thought her plan was really weak, either. No, I was miffed because Tina was wearing body glitter. Really! She had it smeared all over her collar bone. How come I can’t even seem to find body glitter in the store? And if I did, would I have the coolness to smear it on my collarbone? No. Because I am too boring.
“We are not playing Seven Minutes in Heaven at my birthday party,” I informed her.
Tina looked crestfallen. “Why not?”
“Because this is a nerd party! My God, Tina! We are nerds. We don’t play Seven Minutes in Heaven. That is the kind of thing people like Lana and Josh play at their parties. At nerd parties, we play things like Spoon, or possibly Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. But not kissing games!”
But Tina was totally adamant that nerds DO play kissing games.
“Because if they don’t,” she pointed out, “then how do you think little nerds get made?”
I suggested that little nerds get made in the privacy of nerd homes after nerds marry, but Tina wasn’t even listening anymore. She flounced out into the main room to greet Boris, who’d actually, it turned out, arrived a half hour before, but since he hadn’t wanted to be the first one at the party had stood in my vestibule for thirty minutes, reading all of the Chinese menus the delivery boys shoved under the door.
“Where’s Lilly?” I asked Boris, because I would have thought the two of them would arrive at the same time, seeing as how they are dating and all.
But Boris said he hadn’t seen Lilly since the march on Les Hautes Manger that afternoon.
“She was at the front of the group,” he explained to me, as he stood by the refreshment table (really our dining table) shoving Cheetos in his mouth. A surprising amount of orange powder got trapped between the spokes of his bionater. It was oddly fascinating to watch, in a completely gross way. “You know, with her megaphone, leading the chants. That was the last I saw of her. I got hungry and stopped for a hot dog, and next thing I knew, they had all marched on without me.”
I told Boris that that is, actually, the point of a march… that people are supposed to march, not wait for members of the group who’d stopped for hot dogs. Boris seemed kind of surprised to hear this, which I guess is not surprising, since he is from Russia, where marching of any kind was outlawed for many years, except marches for the glorification of Lenin, or whatever.
Anyway, Michael showed up next with the mix for the CD player. I’d thought about having his band play for my party, since they are always looking for gigs, but Mr. G said no way, as he gets in enough trouble with our downstairs neighbor Verl just for playing his drums. A whole band might send Verl over the edge. Verl goes to bed promptly every night at 9 p.m. so he can be up before dawn to record the activity of our neighbors across the way, whom he believes are aliens sent to this planet to observe us and report back to the mothership in preparation for eventual interplanetary warfare. The people across the way don’t look like aliens to me, but they are German, so you can see why Verl might have made such a mistake.
Michael, as usual, looked incredibly hot. WHY does he always have to look so handsome, every time I see him? I mean, you would think I would get used to how he looks, seeing as how I see him practically every day… a couple of times a day, even.
But each and every time I see him, my heart gives this giant lurch. Like he’s a present I’m just about to unwrap, or something. It’s sick, this weakness I have for him. Sick, I tell you.
Anyway, Michael put the music on, and other people started to arrive, and everyone was milling around talking about the march and last night’s Farscape marathon—everybody except for me, who hadn’t taken part in either. Instead, I just ran around taking people’s coats (because even though it was May it was still nippy out) and praying that everybody was having a good time and that no one would leave early or overhear my mother telling anyone who would listen about her incredible shrinking bladder….
Then the doorbell rang and I went to answer it and there was Lilly, standing there with her arms around this dark-haired guy in a leather jacket.
“Hi!” Lilly said, looking all bubbly and excited. “I don’t think you two have met. Mia, this is Jangbu. Jangbu, this is Princess Amelia of Genovia. Or Mia, as we call her.”
I stared at Jangbu in shock. Not because, you know, Lilly had brought him to my party without asking first, or anything. But because, well, Lilly had her arm around his waist. She was practically hanging on him, for crying out loud. And her boyfriend Boris was right there, in the next room, trying to learn the electric slide from Shameeka….
“Mia,” Lilly said, stepping inside with a look of annoyance. “Don’t say hi, or anything.”
I said, “Oh, sorry. Hi.”
Jangbu said hi back, and smiled. The truth was, Jangbu WAS incredibly good-looking, just like Lilly had said. In fact, he was way better-looking than poor Boris. Well, I hate to admit it, but who isn’t? Still, I never thought Lilly liked Boris for his looks, anyway. I mean, Boris is a musical genius, and I happen to know that, given the fact that I myself go out with one, they are not easy to find.
Fortunately Lilly had to let go of Jangbu long enough for him to take off his leather jacket when I offered to put it in the bedroom for him. So when Boris finally saw that she’d arrived and went over to say hello, he didn’t notice anything amiss. I took Jangbu and Lilly’s jackets and wandered, in a daze, back toward my bedroom. I ran into Michael along the way, who grinned at me and said, “Having fun yet?”
