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What CAN I do? Nothing.
Um… you could try talking to him about it.
ARE YOU CRAZY????? Michael said he thinks the prom is LAME. If I tell him it’s always been my secret fantasy to go to the prom with the man I love, what does that make me? Hello. That would make me lame.
Michael would never think you’re lame, Mia. He loves you. I mean, maybe if he knew how you really felt, he’d come around to the whole prom thing.
Shameeka, I’m sorry, but I really think you’ve seen too many episodes of Seventh Heaven.
It’s not my fault. It’s the only show my dad’ll let me watch.
Monday, May 5,
I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to take this. You could cut the tension in this room with a knife. I almost wish Mrs. Hill would come in and yell at us or something. Anything, ANYTHING to break this awful silence.
Yes, silence. I know it seems weird that there’d be silence in the G and T room, considering that this is where Boris Pelkowski is supposed to practice his violin, usually with so much vigor that we are forced to lock him in the supply closet so that we are not maddened by the incessant scraping of his bow.
But no. That bow has been silenced… I fear forever. Silenced by the cruel blow of heartache, in the form of a philandering girlfriend… who happens to be my best friend Lilly.
Lilly is sitting here next to me pretendin
g like she doesn’t feel the waves of silent grief radiating from her boyfriend, who is sitting in the back corner of the room by the globe, his head buried in his arms. She has to be pretending, because everybody else can feel them. The waves of grief emanating from her boyfriend, I mean. At least, I think so. True, Michael is working on his keyboard like nothing is going on. But he has headphones on. Maybe headphones shield you from radiating waves of grief.
I should have asked for headphones for my birthday.
I wonder if I should go over to the teachers’ lounge and get Mrs. Hill and tell her Boris is sick. Because I really do think he might be. Sick, I mean. Sick at heart and possibly even in the brain. How can Lilly be so mean? It is like she is punishing Boris for a crime he didn’t commit. All through lunch, Boris kept asking her if they could go somewhere private, like the third-floor stairwell, to talk, and Lilly just kept saying, “I’m sorry, Boris, but there’s nothing to talk about. It’s over between us. You’re just going to have to accept it, and move on.”
“But why?” Boris kept wailing. Really loud, too. Like loud enough that the jocks and cheerleaders, over at the popular people’s table, kept looking over at us and snickering. It was a little embarrassing. But very dramatic. “What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Lilly said, throwing him a bone at last. “I am just not in love with you anymore. Our relationship has progressed to its natural peak, and while I will always treasure the memories of what we had together, it’s time for me to move on. I’ve helped you achieve self-actualization, Boris. You don’t need me anymore. I have to turn my attention to another tortured soul.”
I don’t know what Lilly means about Boris having reached self-actualization. I mean, it isn’t like he’s gotten rid of his bionater, or anything. And he’s still tucking his sweater into his pants, except when I remind him not to. He is probably the least self-actualized person I know…. With the exception of myself, of course.
Boris didn’t take any of this too well. I mean, as far as kiss-offs go, it was pretty harsh. But Boris should know as well as anybody that once Lilly makes up her mind about something, that’s pretty much it. She’s sitting here right now working on the speech she wants Jangbu to give at a press conference she’s having him hold at the Chinatown Holiday Inn tonight.
Boris might as well face it: He’s as good as forgotten.
I wonder how the Drs. Moscovitz are going to feel when Lilly introduces them to Jangbu. I am fairly sure my dad wouldn’t let me date a guy who’d graduated from high school already. Except Michael, of course. But he doesn’t count, because I’ve known him for so long.
Uh-oh. Something is happening. Boris has lifted his head from his desk. He is gazing at Lilly with eyes that remind me of hotly blazing coals… if I had ever seen hotly blazing coals, which I haven’t, because coal fires are forbidden within the city limits of Manhattan due to anti-smog regulations. But whatever. He is gazing at her with the same kind of fixed concentration he used to stare at his picture of his role model, world-class violinist Joshua Bell. He’s opening his mouth. He’s about to say something. WHY AM I THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS CLASS WHO IS PAYING THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF ATTENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON—
Monday, May 5, nurse’s office
Oh, my God, that was so dramatic, I can barely write. Seriously. I have never seen so much blood.
I am almost surely destined for some kind of career in the medical sciences, however, because I didn’t feel like fainting. Not even once. In fact, except for Michael and maybe Lars, I think I am the only person in the room to have kept my head. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that, being a writer, I am a natural observer of all human interactions, and I saw what was coming before anyone… maybe even Boris. The nurse even said that if it hadn’t been for my quick intervention, Boris might have lost a lot more blood. Ha! How’s that for princesslike behavior, Grandmère? I saved a guy’s life!
Well, okay, maybe not his life, but whatever, Boris might have passed out or something if it hadn’t been for me. I can’t even imagine what caused him to freak out like that. Well, yes, I guess I can. I think the silence in the G and T room caused Boris to go momentarily mental. Seriously.
I can totally see how it would, since it was bugging me, as well.
Anyway, what happened was, we were all just sitting there minding our own business—well, except for me, of course, since I was watching Boris—when all of a sudden he stood up and went, “Lilly, I can’t take this anymore! You can’t do this to me! You’ve got to give me a chance to prove my undying devotion!”
Or at least it was something like that. It’s kind of hard to remember, given what happened next.
I do remember how Lilly replied, however. She was actually somewhat kind. You could tell she felt a little bit bad about her behavior toward Boris at my party. She went, in a nice voice, “Boris, seriously, I am so sorry, especially about the way it happened. But the truth is, when a love like mine for Jangbu takes hold, there’s no stopping it. You can’t hold back New York baseball fans when the Yankees win the World Series. You can’t hold back New York shoppers when Century Twenty-one has a sale. You can’t hold back the floodwaters in the F train subway tunnels when it pours. Similarly, you can’t hold back love like the kind I feel for Jangbu. I am so, so sorry about it, but seriously, there’s nothing I can do. I love him.”
These words, gently as they were spoken—and even I, Lilly’s severest critic, with the possible exception of her brother, will admit they were spoken gently—seemed to hit Boris like a fist. He shuddered all over. Next thing I knew, he’d picked up the giant globe next to him—which really was a feat of some athleticism—that globe weighs a ton. In fact, the reason it’s in the G and T room is that it’s so heavy, nobody can get it to spin anymore, so the administration, rather than throwing it away, must have figured, well, just stick it in the classroom with the nerds, they’ll take anything…. After all, they’re nerds.
