Maggie Malone Gets the Royal Treatment (7 page)

When I Almost Choke on a Lamb

I've heard that royal weddings last for all of ever, but this one is taking even longer. The guy running the show is some big, important archbishop who is droning on like a human noise machine. I'm worried I'm going to fall asleep—or worse, get hypnotized like Stella did the time that famous magician came to school. He had her clucking like a chicken across the gymnasium floor. I am pretty sure that would not go over well here.

Finally, after some stuff in Latin that I don't get
at
all
, the archbishop declares Princess Clementine and Prince Clayton husband and wife.
Oh
boy
, I think.
Here
comes
the
kissing
part.
The bride and groom lock lips, and it's actually pretty sweet.

An organ blares and scares me so badly I let out a little yelp, but nobody seems to notice. Next thing I know, Prince Dreamy Green Eyes offers me his arm (yes, please!) to usher me back up the ten-mile aisle. I'm blinded by flashbulbs as we make our way out of Winfordshire Abbey and into the horse-drawn carriages waiting outside.

The carriages are all four-seaters, and wouldn't you know it? Prince Henry and I get tucked into seats right across from Princess Penelope and Lord Harold. She's totally ignoring the poor guy.

“So, Harold, how are things down in Southumberland?” I ask. When I do, he leans forward, almost into my lap. Talk about a close-talker. We used to call that
popping
somebody's bubble
in preschool and you could get sent to the middle of the rainbow carpet for that.

“Positively perfection, Princess!” he tells me, spraying my face with spit. I'm blinking and twitching, trying to dodge the spray. “It's plum season, as you know. And I've been pestering Princess Penelope here,” he says, turning his sprinkler her way, “to pay us a particularly overdue visit.”

Penelope wipes her face with a handkerchief and gives me the stink eye. I just smile back at her, because what else can I do?

The carriage takes us back to Wincastle Palace. I guess there's a party that all of England is invited to later tonight, but first there's a private luncheon just for the royal family. I hope they serve steak. I had the best steak I've ever eaten in my life at one of Grandpa Flannery's weddings. It was the perfect shade of pink and tasted like grilled butter and you didn't even really have to chew it because it melted right in your mouth. I'll never forget that steak.

Amelia meets us at the carriage and escorts us to the formal dining room. It's the fanciest place I have ever seen in my life. It's got the same billion-foot ceiling as Mimi's bedroom—maybe taller—and dark red velvet walls and curtains. Every few feet on one wall is a painting of some old man or lady (dead kings and queens, I'm guessing). They're those creepy kinds of paintings where the eyes follow you wherever you go. I try not to make eye contact with any of them.

There is one gigantic table in the middle of the room with maybe fifty chairs around it. Amelia steers us toward the table, where there are little name cards at each seat. Wouldn't you know it, there is Princess Penelope's place…right next to Princess Wilhelmina.

Can
a
pretend
princess
ever
get
a
royal
break?

To my surprise, Princess Penelope pulls my chair back from the table. She nods at it and smiles, and I feel a tiny bit of relief. Maybe she's gotten all that meanness out of her system and wants to be friends now. That sure would be nice. I mouth the words “thank you” and sit down.

“PRINCESS MIMI, what in heaven's name are you
doing
?” Amelia has my shoulders in her hands and is yanking me out of my chair.

“It has my name…Penelope pulled…I was just going to sit…” I try to explain.

“Nobody sits down before Her Majesty the Queen sits, Mimi!” Amelia says. “You know that!”

“I'm so sorry, Amelia,” I tell her. “It won't happen again.” So much for being best buds with Puckerface. That is so not going to happen. If I had a piece of red string, I'd tie it around my finger so I'd never, ever forget that.

We all stand around for an eternity, waiting for the queen, who I think is Mimi's great-aunt, but I'm not picking up on a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings in this family, so it's sort of hard to tell if they're actually related. Finally the queen comes in and makes this big production out of lowering herself into her chair. Big royal deal! If I were a queen, I'd be all, “Hey guys, don't wait for me! Sit down! Take a load off!” Still, mine is the last butt to hit a seat in this room. I'm not taking any chances.

This table is
ridiculous.
Each one of us has a stack of four plates, three forks, and a half dozen drinking glasses. I'm just hoping that dinner is not at all like breakfast because I am so hungry I could eat an entire extra-large pizza all by myself.

“Crab mousse,” announces a man in a tall white chef hat. As he does, fifty waiters—we each have our own waiter?!—set down a plate on top of the stack.

I
said
I
could
eat
an
entire
pizza. Crab mousse? P-U! Thanks, but no thanks. And how am I going to get out of this? Too bad the palace doesn't have a dog running around. Willy comes in really handy at home in situations like this.

At least it's only one little scoop of the stinky stuff. I look around and everyone is holding their spoon up and looking at the queen. She takes her sweet time putting that silver spoon in her mouth, I've got to tell you. Finally she sticks it in there and everyone else does the same thing—all at the exact same time. I figure it's best to just get it over with, so I jam mine in my mouth too.

It's actually not that bad. Kind of weird and salty and creamy but not totally disgusting. Lord Harold thinks this stuff is the cat's pajamas.

“Positively stupendous, wouldn't you say, Princess?” Lord Harold says, gobbling up his last bite of mousse. It looks like down in South-wherever-this-dude-is-from, they don't teach the kids to chew with their mouths closed. Yuck. Not only that, but I'm starting to realize that Lord Harold is what you'd call super-impressed with himself.

“So, Princess Penelope, have you heard about the new stables we've at Kensington Plantation? They are quite possibly perfection and I know how you adore horses, Princess,” Lord Harold says, leaning ever closer like he doesn't have a clue that Penelope might at any moment rip his spitting, sputtering lips right off his face.

“No, Lord Harold, we have not heard about the new stables, but please, do tell,” Penelope says, rolling her eyes. “I'm sure, like all of your stories, it will be quite thrilling.”

“Well,” Lord Harold says, smiling and making this exaggerated yawning motion and throwing both arms up into the air. Then he drops his right arm right down around Penelope's shoulder, like he's Mister Cool making his move. I guess Lord Harold has a sweet spot for super-mean girls. Penelope flings his paw off her shoulder with so much force that it almost knocks the tray out of one of the waiter's hands.

Lord Harold chuckles a little, and for a skinny second, I think he might be uncomfortable, but then he continues talking, clueless as to how she just cut him to the core.

“Well, as you know, the Hadley family spares no expense—we don't have to since my great grandfather laid all the railroads in South Africa back in the late 1800s…”

“Yes, yes, we know, Harold, and your family revolutionized the sugarcane industry and your father is the richest man—royal or otherwise—in the entire United Kingdom,” Penelope yawns. “You've been telling us this story since you were seven years old.”

Harold yammers—or should I say, spatters—on and on about his prosperous family's positively blah, blah, blah new stables. This kid is unbelievable. He reminds me of Stella's ten-year-old cousin, Calvin, who brags about being smarter than 80 percent of all adults just because he went on some stupid quiz show and won a blow-up pool. Stella says she came
this
close
to giving him an atomic wedgie at the family reunion last summer. Now I know how she feels.

Just then, Prince Henry leans over my way and whispers so only I can hear, “He really is quite horrid, isn't he?”

“Uh, well, I…” I stammer because I'm not sure if I should agree. “He sure seems to think he's something special.”

“Yes, well, we all know where he gets that, don't we?” Henry continues, pointing in the direction of the Hadley family. And holy smokes, Lady Hadley is laughing with her head arched back, wearing the biggest, craziest hat in the whole place with about a gazillion feathers exploding out of the top of it. It looks like Lord Hadley is wearing his wife's scarf tucked into the top of his shirt. He's also got just half of a pair of glasses on his face.

“What's the deal with those half glasses?” I ask Henry. “Didn't the rabbit in
Alice
in
Wonderland
wear one of those?”

Henry laughed. “Ridiculous, right?” he says, shaking his head. “And I'm sure his monocle belonged to his fabulously wealthy father—or his great-great-grandfather or something like that. They're really quite showy down in Southumberland. The Hadley family is, anyway.”

I look up and the waiters are all lining up for the next course. I'm crossing my fingers there's a big, juicy steak heading for my plate.

“Lamb in mint sauce,” announces the chef guy as our servers set down the next course.
Blimey!
See, I'm not exactly a vegetarian back home, but I do have one rule: I don't eat cute animals. Rabbit, deer, goose, lamb, all of them, out of the question. I tried to give up beef for a while—I actually do think cows are pretty cute—but by then I'd already had that wedding steak. Plus we have a Burger Barn right next door to school, so that didn't really work out for me.

I stare at my plate. Two long bones with big hunks of meat are crisscrossed on it, and the whole thing is swimming in green goo. The queen delicately slices off a chunk of meat and the rest of the room does the same. She pops it into her mouth and sighs happily. Everyone else follows. Except me. I just can't do it.

“Is there something wrong with your lamb, Princess Mimi?” Penelope asks with a big smirk. “If so, I'll be happy to alert the chef.”

Sorry, my fleecy little friend
, I think to myself, shoving a bite into my mouth. It's horribly sweet, and the mint makes it taste like those Life Savers Granny Malone always keeps in her purse. Who puts
mint
on top of meat, anyway? I chew and I chew, but my throat seems to have forgotten how to swallow. It's all I can do not to gag.

I smile sweetly at Penelope and keep right on chewing. I'm trying to figure out how I can spit this minty wad into my napkin when I hear fifty forks being placed on their plates. The queen has stopped eating—which means we have to stop too. Make that, we
get
to stop. I grab my water goblet and take a huge swig, and then another. Finally that meat goes down. I make a promise right then and there that I will never complain about my mom's meatloaf ever again.

Dessert is cherries jubilee, and while cherries aren't exactly my favorite (I normally pluck the cherry off the top of a hot fudge sundae and give it to Mickey or Stella), after that Life Saver lamb, I'm grateful for any other taste in my mouth. Most of all, I'm glad this meal is just about over. The reception will be the fun part. Plus I'll have room to roam and I can stay far, far away from Princess Penelope.

When I Get My Groove On

After the luncheon, the wedding party is led to the part of Wincastle Palace's golf-course-sized yard known as “the meadow” for what Amelia tells me will be an eight-hour reception.
Eight
hours?
I'm hoping we get another meal or else I might pass out on the dance floor.

Talk about tents! It looks like the circus has come to town—all of them in the world, all at once. As we trot through the tent city to our assigned seats, there are cheers all around. Yes, princesses get applause just for showing up and being born royal.

Everyone stands as the Archduke of Wincastle introduces the bride and groom. Cousin Clementine really does look beautiful and her new husband Prince Clayton isn't bad either—except for that shock of neon red hair on his head. Yowza! I wonder if it glows in the dark. That would be all kinds of awesome at Friday night Glo-Bowl.

The bride and groom have their first dance. It's pretty magical. She's as graceful as a ballerina, and they both move like those professional dancers on TV. When they're finished, people start flooding out onto the dance floor.

Prince Henry turns to me. I have to say, it's not just those sparkly green eyes or that adorable grin or those Chiclet-white teeth that get me with this guy. Those things are nothing compared to how nice and well,
charming
he is. My mom is always saying that it's what's inside that counts, and she must be right because Prince Henry makes me go all gooey inside.

“So, what's your favorite dance of the moment, Princess?” Prince Henry asks. “Everyone knows you to be the best dancer in all of Wincastle.”

“Me?” I answer. I didn't know this about Princess Mimi! “A great dancer? Aw, well, you know…”

I'm really wishing I'd taken my mom up on those fancy dance classes she wanted me to take back in fourth grade. I'd thrown a bit of a hissy fit about going after my big cousin Clare told me how the boys' sweaty hands get the girls' white gloves all slimy. Blech! Mom finally caved in and said I didn't have to go. She said I would regret it someday, though, and I do. Right about now.

“Your modesty is most endearing, Princess,” Henry says, standing and pulling my chair back. “A dance of your choosing, if you please. You lead and I'll follow.”

Penelope doesn't look happy at all, which gives me just the courage I need to march onto the dance floor. I'll show that cruel cousin of mine how it's done.

As Prince Henry leads me by the small of my back toward the dance floor, I start flipping through my brain trying to think of some dances I know. Wait a minute! Stella and I learned the Cowgirl Booty Scoot on MeTube last summer. I'm really good at that! There's a lot of kicking and twisting, though. I wonder if I can pull that off with this heavy cape around my neck. But when you think about it, what choice do I have?

“I don't know if you know this one, Henry, but it's pretty easy,” I whisper as we reach the edge of the black-and-white marble dance floor. “I'm sure you'll catch on quickly. Just hang on a second!”

I race over to the orchestra and ask a guy who's sort of hanging out to one side if they can play something country. He looks at me like I'm crazy.

“Country and western?” I have to yell over the music so he can hear me. “You know, cowboys, horses, pickup trucks. Country!”

“Oh!” he shouts back with a smile. “I believe we can do that, Princess Mimi!”

After some whispering and flipping of sheet music, the musicians start playing a twang-y sort of song. It's not one I know, but it sounds like it'll do.

I pull Prince Henry out to the middle of the dance floor and count off in my head just like Stella and I do before we start our routine.
Five, six, seven, eight.
I start with a smooth slide to the right and a clap, then put my hands on my hips and I slide back to the left. Next I do what's called a kick-ball-change two times to the right. Then I shake my shoulders. And shake my shoulders some more. Forward and back with more claps in between. This bit's a little tricky. The key is to get really loose. So that's what I do.

People are starting to leave the dance floor—they probably feel bad since I know this dance so well—but I'm too focused on my moves to give it another thought. I do one more kick-ball-change to the left before I hit my favorite part, where you slap yourself on the booty just before you turn to the right and start the whole thing over again.

This is awesome! I'm totally loose, shaking my shoulders, leaning down and then up, when I look over to see if Prince Henry is getting into it yet. He most definitely is not. He's actually just standing there with his mouth hanging open. Obviously he's amazed by my killer moves.

I glance around the room. A few people are staring, some are whispering and pointing, and Penelope is doubled over laughing. Maybe this
isn't
the best dance to be doing at a royal wedding, now that I think about it. But it's all I know. And I always stick to what I know.

Henry hesitates a little and then comes over to me. “I'm so sorry, but I'm not at all familiar with this dance, Princess,” he yells. “Would you mind showing me that turning bit again?”

I count in my head again (
five, six, seven, eight
) then I start at the beginning, but more slowly this time. It takes him a few tries, but Henry gets the steps down and then he starts getting into it too. When he does, a bunch of the wedding party trickles over with their dates, and Henry and I teach them the steps. Pretty soon we've got at least four lines of people dancing. And then the dance floor is packed with dancers clapping and laughing and slapping their booties.

I'm having the best time in all of history when I see the queen stand up. It looks like she's walking straight toward me, but I'm crossing my fingers that she's just going to the loo or checking out the cake table or something. But she's not.

“So, Princess,” says Her Royal Highness the Queen of Wincastle, coming to a full stop right in front of my face. “What do you call this dance?”

“This is the Cowgirl Booty Scoot, Your Majesty!” I answer, all out of breath.

She lifts her eyebrows and nods and then—and I know this is hard to believe but I triple pinkie promise you it happens—she starts dancing. In line. Right next to me.

“Oh my, Princess,” the Queen of Wincastle says with a laugh. “It is quite amusing!” And then she
smacks
her
royal
booty
, right there for all of Wincastle to see.

The dance floor is a total mob scene. In fact, Penelope is practically the only wedding guest not out here slapping her backside. I see Lord Harold leave the floor to invite her to dance, but she just smacks his hand away. I can't help but find it absolutely hilarious how much Lord Harold seems to love Penelope.
Positively
priceless!
I think to myself and laugh out loud, but no one can hear me over all the stomping and booty slapping.

Eventually, the orchestra slides into a slow song—probably a waltz or something like that—and the dance floor starts to clear because booty-slapping
is
pretty exhausting. I'm pooped. I plop down in a comfy, out-of-the-way chair to catch my breath. About three whole minutes pass before I look up to see Prince Henry smiling down at me with two tall glasses of ice water and the cutest sideways grin I ever saw.