I didn’t wake up for dinner or anything. I slept until seven this morning! That is fifteen hours straight.
Wow. I must have been fried from all the excitement of being back home and seeing Michael, or something.
Or maybe I really did have jet lag, and that whole I-am-a-talentless-bum thing from yesterday wasn’t rooted in my low self-esteem, but was due to a chemical imbalance from lack of REM. You know they say that people who are sleep deprived start suffering from hallucinations after a while. There was a DJ who stayed up for eleven days straight, the longest recorded period of time anyone has ever gone without sleep, and he started playing nothing but Phil Collins, and that’s how they knew it was time to call the ambulance.
Except that even after fifteen hours of sleep, I still feel like a bit of a talentless bum. But at least today I don’t feel like it’s such a tragedy. I think sleeping for fifteen hours straight has given me some perspective. I mean, not everyone can be super geniuses like Lilly and Michael. Just like not everyone can be a violin virtuoso like Boris. I have to be good at something . I just need to figure out what that something is. I asked Mr. G today at breakfast what he thinks I am good at, and he said he thinks I make some interesting fashion statements sometimes.
But that cannot have been what Lilly was referring to, as I was wearing my school uniform at the time she mentioned my mystery talent, which hardly leaves room for creative expression.
Mr. G’s remark reminded me that I still haven’t found my Queen Amidala underwear. But I wasn’t about to ask my stepfather if he’d seen them. EW! I try not to look at Mr. Gianini’s underwear when it comes back all folded from the laundry-by-the-pound place, and thankfully he extends the same courtesy to me.
And I couldn’t ask my mom because once again she was dead to the world this morning. I guess pregnant women need as much sleep as teenagers and DJs.
But I had seriously better find them before Friday, or my first date with Michael will be a full on disaster, I just know it. Like, he’ll probably open his present and be all, “Uh… I guess it’s the thought that counts.”
I probably should have just followed Mrs. Hakim Baba’s rules and gotten him a sweater.
But Michael is so not the sweater type! I realized it as we pulled up in front of his building today. He was standing there, looking all tall and manly and Heath Ledger-like… except for having dark hair, not blond.
And his scarf was kind of blowing in the wind, and I could see that part of his throat, you know, right beneath his Adam’s apple and right above where his shirt collar opens, the part that Lars once told me if you hit someone hard enough, it would paralyze them. Michael’s throat was so nice-looking, so smooth and concave, that all I could think about was Mr. Rochester, out on Mesrour, his horse, brooding about his great love for Jane….
And I knew, I just knew, I was right not to have gotten Michael a sweater. I mean, Kate Bosworth would never have given her quarterback boyfriend a sweater. Ew.
Anyway, then Michael saw me and smiled and he didn’t look like Mr. Rochester anymore, because Mr. Rochester never smiled.
He just looked like Michael. And my heart turned over in my chest like it always does when I see him.
“Are you okay?” he wanted to know, as soon as he got into the limo. His eyes, so brown they are almost black—like the peat bogs Mr. Rochester was always striding past out there on the moor, because if you step into a peat bog, you can sink in up to your head and never be heard from again… which in a way is like what happens every time I look into Michael’s eyes: I fall and fall and am pretty sure I will never be able to get out of them again, but that’s okay, because I love being there—looked deeply into mine. My eyes are merely gray, the color of a New York City sidewalk. Or parking meter.
“I called you last night,” Michael said, as his sister pushed him to move over on the seat so that she could get into the limo, too. “But your mom said you’d passed out—”
“I was really, really tired,” I said, delighted by the fact that he appeared to have been worried about me. “I slept for fifteen hours straight.”
“Whatever,” Lilly said. She was clearly not interested in the details of my sleep cycle. “I heard from the producers of your movie.”
I was surprised. “Really? What did they say?”
“They asked me to take a breakfast meeting with them,” Lilly said, sounding like she was trying not to brag. Only she wasn’t succeeding terribly well. You could totally hear the gloating in her voice. “Friday morning. So I won’t be needing a ride.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “A breakfast meeting? Really? Will they serve bagels?”
“Probably,” Lilly said.
I was impressed. I have never been invited to a breakfast meeting with producers before. Just the Genovian ambassador to Spain.
I asked Lilly if she had come up with a list of demands for the producers, and she said she had, but she wouldn’t tell me what they were.
I think I am going to have to watch this movie, and see what’s making her so mad. My mom has it on tape. She said it was one of the funniest things she has ever seen.
But then, my mom laughs all through Dirty Dancing , even the parts that aren’t supposed to be funny, so I don’t know if she is the best judge.
Uh-oh. One of the cheerleaders (sadly, not Lana) tore her Achilles tendon doing pilates over the break, so they just announced they are holding tryouts for a replacement, as the team’s alternate got transferred to a girls’ school in Massachusetts due to having too wild of a party while her parents were in Martinique.
I sincerely hope Lilly is too busy protesting the movie of my life to protest the new cheerleading tryouts. Last semester she made me walk around with a big sign that said CHEERLEADING IS SEXIST AND NOT A SPORT , which I am not even sure is technically true, since they have cheerleading championships on ESPN. But it is a fact that there are no cheerleaders for the female sports in our school. Like Lana and her gang never turn out for the girls’ basketball team or the girls’ volleyball team, but they never miss a boys’ game. So maybe the sexist part is true.
Oh, God, a geek just came in with a hall pass. A hall pass for me! I am being summoned to the office! And I didn’t even do anything! Well, not this time, anyway.
Wednesday, January 21, Principal Gupta’s office