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But I can’t call him. I can never call him again. Because what would I even SAY to him, after what just happened?
It’s a really good thing this limo comes with its own barf bags.
Friday, September 10, 3 p.m., the Four Seasons
Grandmère is the worst person to hang around with when you aren’t feeling well. Being a cylon, she, of course, never feels sick—or at least, never remembers what it was like when she DID feel sick—and is completely lacking in compassion for anyone feeling out of sorts.
Worse, she is WAY excited that Michael and I broke up.
“I always knew That Boy was trouble,” she said, all happily, when I explained what I was doing, showing up at her suite in the midafternoon, supposedly infected with a highly contagious disease. I’m not sick, Grandmère, I’d said. I’m just sad.
Because, the problem is, I haven’t stopped loving Michael. So instead of agreeing with her that he was trouble, I was just like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” and went and sat on her couch, pulling Rommel onto my lap for comfort.
Yes. That’s how far gone I was. I was looking to ROMMEL, a toy poodle, for comfort.
“Oh, there’s nothing inherently WRONG with Michael,” Grandmère went on. “Except that he’s a commoner. Well, tell me. What did he do? It must have been something particularly heinous for you to have taken off That Necklace.”
My hand went to the empty spot at my throat. My necklace! I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been missing it—how strange it felt not to have it on—until just then. Michael’s necklace had been a bit of a bone of contention between Grandmère and me. She always wanted me to put on the Genovian royal jewels for balls and functions I attended, but I would never take Michael’s necklace off, and let’s just say Grandmère isn’t a fan of the layered necklace look.
Well, I guess a silver snowflake on a chain doesn’t exactly go with a diamond-and-sapphire choker.
I figured there was no point in hiding the truth from Grandmère, since she’d weasel it out of me somehow. So I went, “He slept with Judith Gershner.”
Grandmère looked delighted. Well, she WOULD.
“Cheated on you! Well, never mind. Plenty of fish in the sea. What about that nice boy who was in my play, the Reynolds-Abernathy boy? He’d make a lovely consort for you. Such a nice young man. So tall and blond and handsome!”
I just ignored that. What could I have said in reply? Sometimes I wonder if lunacy runs in the family.
Actually, I KNOW it does.
Instead, I said, “Michael didn’t cheat on me. He slept with Judith Gershner before we started going out.”
“Is she that horse fly girl?” Grandmère wanted to know. “I can see why you’d be upset about that. Those horrible black tennis shoes!”
“Grandmère.” Seriously. What is WRONG with her? “It’s not about how she LOOKS. It’s that Michael LIED to me about it. I asked him if they were going out, and he said no. Plus, he didn’t even LOVE her. What kind of person gives his Precious Gift to someone he doesn’t even LOVE?”
Grandmère just looked at me. She seemed confused. “His precious what?”
“GIFT.” God, she can be so dense. “HIS PRECIOUS GIFT. You only have ONE. And he gave his to JUDITH GERSHNER, a girl he didn’t even CARE about. He should have waited. He should have given it to ME.”
I didn’t mention the part about how he’d just caught me kissing another boy. Because it didn’t really seem to pertain to the matter at hand.
Grandmère just looked more confused. “Was this gift some kind of family heirloom? Because the rules of etiquette dictate that when a young man gives you a family heirloom, it is only yours to keep for the duration of the relationship, and must be returned in the event of the dissolution of the engagement.”
“His Precious Gift isn’t a RING, Grandmère,” I said, fighting for patience. “His Precious Gift is his VIRGINITY.”
Grandmère blinked at me. “His virginity? Virginity is no GIFT. You can’t even WEAR it!”
“Grandmère,” I said. I can’t believe she is so behind the times. Well, it’s not surprising she has no idea what I’m talking about. I was listening to “Dance, Dance” on my iPod the other day and she overheard it and said it was “catchy” and asked who sang it and when I said Fall Out Boy, she accused me of lying and said no one would name a band something that stupid. I tried to explain that the name came from Bart on the show The Simpsons, and she was just like, “BART WHO? Do you mean WALLIS SIMPSON? She didn’t have a relative named Bart. That I know of.”
See? She’s hopeless.
“Your virginity is a Precious Gift you are supposed to give only to a person whom you love,” I explained slowly, so she’d understand. “Only Michael gave his to Judith Gershner, a girl he didn’t love and with whom, in fact, he says he was only ‘messing around.’ So now he has no gift to give me, the girl he professes to love, because he SQUANDERED his gift on someone he didn’t even care about.”
Grandmère shook her head. “That Miss Gershner did you a FAVOR, young lady. You should be kissing her feet. No woman wants an inexperienced lover. Well, except apparently all these young blond female teachers I keep seeing on the news, who are sleeping with their fourteen-year-old male students. But I must say, they all appear to be mentally unhinged to me. What on earth do they TALK to these young boys about? Because it certainly isn’t why their trousers are falling down. Tell me, Amelia, why IS that considered so fashionable? What is so appealing about a young man whose pants are halfway down to his knees?”
I could think of no reply to this. Because what can you even SAY to that?
