morning. We played a game of foozball before Lars showed up in the limo. We even offered Mr. G a ride to school, but he said he was coming in later.
Really later, it looks like.
A lot of people aren’t here today, actually. Michael, for instance, didn’t catch a ride with us this morning. Lilly says that is because he had last-minute problems printing out a paper that is due today.
But I wonder if it is really because he is too scared to face me after admitting that he is Jo-C-rox.
Well, not that he actually admitted it. But he sort of did.
Didn’t he?
Mr. Howell is three times as old as Gilligan. The difference in their ages is 48. How old are Mr. Howell and Gilligan?
T=Gilligan
3T=Mr. Howell
3T–T=48
2T=48
T=24
Oh, Mr G, where ARE you?
Friday, October 31, G & T
Okay.
I will never underestimate Lilly Moscovitz again. Nor will I suspect her of having anything but the most altruistic motives. This I hereby solemnly swear in writing.
It was at lunch when it happened:
We were all sitting there—me, my bodyguard, Tina Hakim Baba and her bodyguard, Lilly, Boris, Shameeka, and Ling Su. Michael, of course, sits over with the rest of the Computer Club, so he wasn’t there, but everybody else who mattered was.
Shameeka was reading aloud to us from some of the brochures her father had gotten from girls’ schools in New Hampshire. Each one filled Shameeka with more terror, and me with more shame for ever having opened my big mouth in the first place.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over our little table.
We looked up.
There stood an apparition of such godlike stature that for a minute, I think even Lilly believed the chosen people’s long lost Messiah had finally shown up.
It turned out it was only Hank—but Hank looking as I had certainly never seen him before. He had on a black cashmere sweater beneath a clinging black leather coat, and black jeans that seemed to go on and on over his long, lean legs. His golden hair had been expertly styled and cut, and—I swear—he looked so much like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix that I actually might have believed he had wandered in off the set if it hadn’t been for the fact that on his feet, he wore cowboy boots. Black, expensive-looking ones, but cowboy boots, just the same.
I don’t think it was my imagination that the entire crowd inside the cafeteria seemed to gasp as Hank slid into a chair at our table—the reject table, I have frequently heard it called.
“Hello, Mia,” Hank said.
I stared at him. It wasn’t just the clothes. There was something . . . different about him. His voice seemed deeper, somehow. And he smelled . . . well, good.
“So,” Lilly said to him, as she scooped a glob of creamy filling out of her Ring Ding. “How’d it go?”
“Well,” Hank said, in that same deep voice. “You’re looking at Calvin Klein’s newest underwear model.”
Lilly sucked the filling off her finger. “Hmmm,” she said, with her mouth full. “Good for you.”
“I owe it all to you, Lilly,” Hank said. “If it weren’t for you, they never would have signed me.”