I think.
Somehow, I managed to stammer out, “Uh, no one,” and he goes, and I kid you not:
“Well, why don’t we go together?”
OH MY GOD!!!!! JOSH RICHTER ASKED ME OUT!!!!!
I was so shocked I couldn’t say anything at all for like a minute. I thought I was going to hyperventilate, like I did the time I saw that documentary about how cows become hamburgers. I could only stand there and look up at him. (He’s so tall!)
Then a funny thing happened. This tiny part of my brain—the only part that wasn’t completely stunned by his asking me out—went: He’s only asking you out because you’re the princess of Genovia.
Seriously. That’s what I thought, for just a second.
Then this other part of my brain, a much bigger part, went: SO WHAT???
I mean, maybe he asked me to the dance because he respects me as a human being and wants to get to know me better and maybe, just maybe, likes me, sort of.
It could happen.
So the part of my brain that was rationalizing all this made me go, all nonchalantly, “Yeah, okay. That might be fun.”
Then Josh said a bunch of stuff about how he’d pick me up and we’d have dinner beforehand or something. But I barely heard him. Because inside my head, this voice was going:
Josh Richter just asked you out. Josh Richter just asked YOU out. JOSH RICHTER JUST ASKED YOU OUT!!!!
I think I must have died and gone to heaven. Because it had happened. It had finally happened: Josh Richter had finally looked into my soul. He had looked into my soul, and had seen the real me, the one beneath the flat chest. AND THEN HE’D ASKED ME OUT.
Then the bell rang, and Josh went away, and I just kept standing there until Lars poked me in the arm.
I don’t know what Lars’s problem is. I know he’s not my personal secretary.
But thank God he was there, or I’d never have known Josh was picking me up tomorrow night at seven. I’m going to have to learn not to be so shocked the next time he asks me out, or I’ll never get the hang of this dating thing.
THINGS TO DO (I THINK, NEVER HAVING BEEN ON A DATE BEFORE, I AM NOT EXACTLY SURE WHAT TO DO)
Get a dress
Get hair done
Get nails redone (stop biting fake ones off)
Friday, G & T
Okay, so I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is. First she stops talking to me. Then, when she finally does deign to speak to me, it’s only to criticize me some more. What right has she got, I ask you, to dump all over my Cultural Diversity Dance date? I mean, she’s going with Boris Pelkowski. Boris Pelkowski. Yeah, he might be a musical genius and all, but he’s still Boris Pelkowski.
Lilly goes: “Well, at least I know Boris isn’t on the rebound.”
Excuse me. Josh Richter is not on the rebound. He and Lana had been broken up for sixteen whole hours before he asked me out.
Lilly goes: “Plus Boris doesn’t do drugs.”
I swear, for someone so smart, Lilly sure does go for the whole rumor and innuendo thing in a major way. I asked her if she’d ever seen Josh do drugs, and she looked at me all sarcastically.
But really, if you think about it, there isn’t any proof Josh does drugs. He definitely hangs out with people who do drugs, but hey, Tina Hakim Baba hangs out with a princess, and that doesn’t make her one.
Lilly didn’t like that argument, though. She went: “You’re overrationalizing. Whenever you overrationalize, Mia, I know you’re worried.”
I am not worried. I am going to the biggest dance of the fall semester with the cutest, most sensitive boy in school, and nothing anyone can do or say will make me feel bad about that.