Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) (8 page)

Or the me with a lesbian mother and a father who, while totally straight, knows the proper way to serve beluga caviar and which style wineglass to use for a cabernet versus a white zinfandel.

But I’m happy anyway, because I can tell Georg’s going to be a lot more interesting to hang out with than David ever was.

Georg likes my sketches. And he actually
talks
to me, unlike David.

Okay, I take that back. David does talk to me. But it’s not like he sets a time and a place when he says, “See you tomorrow.” There’s a difference.

I can’t wait to see if my computer’s hooked up so I can tell Christie I won’t be totally friendless in Schwerinborg.

Or not.

I’ll have to think about it first.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Official Schwerinborg Palace E-mail

(AS IF!)

Hey, Christie!

Told you it wasn’t like you’d never talk to me again. Less than 24 hours and here I am in your face already.

So here’s the latest: I really am living in a palace. Not the fairy-tale kind with turrets—this one’s more like a big mansion. There are lots of paintings of old men on the walls in the main part of the palace, and each and every one of these guys looks constipated. You’d think
they’d get more fiber. Or, assuming they didn’t have Metamucil handy, that the artists wouldn’t immortalize them in oils looking so pained (and no goofing on how you think I make
you
look constipated, okay? I so
don’t
.).

What really rots, though, is that my room feels like it’s in Antarctica instead of Schwerinborg. You’d think that royalty could afford heat, but Dad tells me that European palaces constructed in the 1700s have their limitations.

The government offices—in a different part of the palace, next to where Prince Manfred lives—were done over in the mid 90s and are all beautiful and modern on the inside. Those rooms have heat. Of course.

That’s it for now—I want to make sure this gets through before I type any more. If it does, you HAVE to tell me how things went last night at David’s Christmas party. Did David actually get booze like Jeremy said he would? Did you drink anything? I just know I’d chicken out. I mean, how’d you get back in your house? My parents would smell alcohol on my breath from a mile away.

And—most important—any south-of-the-border action with Jeremy?

Needless to say, I have not met a single David Anderson look-alike yet, so your dreams of someday double dating with me and the real David (ha ha ha!!) are safe. If I have to judge by the looks of the guys who carried our luggage up to our rooms, I’m not expecting Schwerinborg to be Hottie Heaven. But I’ll let you know if anything develops.

Val

After firing off my e-mail to Christie, I send slightly blander e-mails to Jules and Natalie, just so they won’t feel unloved. I’m exhausted, but I just know that if Christie gets an e-mail tonight and Jules and Natalie don’t get any until tomorrow, they’ll get all whiny and overanalyze the whole thing, decide I’ve turned into a total bitch, and then they’ll refuse to e-mail me back out of spite.

Of course, it won’t even occur to them that they’ve ignored me for, like, the last
week
.

Sometimes girls suck. Guys would never be this way.

I probably should have told Christie
about Georg, but—since, even though I adore her, Christie is a typical girly-girl too and overanalyzes everything—I’m afraid it’ll make her think ’m not interested in David. And I still want to hear how, or
if,
David says anything to Jeremy about me being gone, before I say anything about Georg.

Plus, I figure I should wait and see if my first impression of Georg holds up before I announce that I’ve found a potential friend—maybe even a boyfriend—over here. Telling anyone would be making my expectations official, and I’m not there yet.

I curl up in bed, hug my pillow (a rather flat and hard thing—I may have to add
fluffy pillow
to
hair dryer
on the shopping list), and try to go to sleep. You’d think, given the fact that I’ve been up for a bazillion hours trying to regulate my body to European time, that I’d crash hard. But I can’t. I’m obsessing over David.

I pull my pillow closer and wonder what it’d be like if it was David cuddling with me instead. Would his blond hair feel as soft as it looks when I’m sitting behind him at a football game? Would he hold me
tight, with his body fitting right against mine, and tell me that he s loved me from afar for years and been too scared to say so?

I know it’s impossible, but late at night, when I’m alone in bed, I can’t help but pretend.

As my mind drifts, I find myself wondering what might have happened if I could have gone to David’s Christmas party, and if my mom was her old self and I didn’t have to give a rat’s ass about David’s dad and his beliefs. Would David and I have ended up making out in some bedroom or on the back porch, like Jeremy and Christie always do?

Of course, I’ve never seen south-ofthe-border action, like I suspect Christie and Jeremy might have if they got enough privacy after the party ended last night. I haven’t even seen
north
-of-the-border action. Christie suspects this, but I haven’t told her for sure. Even though the A-listers know I’ve never had a serious boyfriend, I’ve tried to be real mysterious about what happens on family vacations or who I might’ve met when I had to go to summer camp during junior high. I
don’t want them to think I’m a total loser.

And besides, they’re not going to tell me about
their
action if they think I won’t get what they’re talking about. But how can I get it—or get any, really—if they won’t tell me anything? How else am I going to figure it all out so I don’t make a complete and total fool of myself when a guy really does get interested?

I fold my pillow in half so it’s almost like my pillow at home and close my eyes. But the second I get comfortable, there’s a light knock on my door and I hear Dad whisper, “Val? You still awake?”

I take a deep breath and debate turning up the Avril Levigne playing on my clock radio. Finally I just click it off and answer, “Yeah. What’s up, Dad?”

He opens the door, and enough light comes in from the living room to make me squint when I look in his direction. I think he’s holding my notebook, but it’s hard to tell. “Valerie, I’m sorry to wake you up. I hope you don’t think this is an invasion of your privacy, but I needed a piece of paper, and—”

He reaches for the light switch, but I
wave for him to quit. “Hey! No lights!”

He hesitates, then leans against the door frame. “Did you draw this picture?”

“If it’s in that notebook, then yeah, probably. Hold it out in the light and I’ll tell you for sure.”

He takes a step back into the living room and holds up the notebook, which is opened to the page with my half-finished picture of Georg.

“Yeah,” I say. “His names Georg. He came into the library after I went down there to study. He introduced himself, and we talked for a while.”

“Did he see you drawing this?”

I push myself up on my elbows and shrug. “It was his idea. Why? What’s the big deal?”

“What do you know about this young man?”

I can’t believe he woke me up for this. Or almost woke me up, at least.

“Geez, Dad, chill. There’s nothing to get in a twist about. His parents work here in the palace, so he lives here, like us. We were just hanging out in the library, that’s all. I promise. I sat up straight and
acted like a good girl and everything.”

Dad sucks in a deep breath, and even in the half light streaming in from the living room, I can see his nostrils going in, then out. “Did Georg tell you what his parents do?”

“Does it matter?”

Dad takes a step into my room. “Yes. Because Georg is
Prince Georg,
Valerie. Prince Manfred is Georg’s father. You didn’t know that?”

Um, no, I didn’t know that, so I just stare at my dad. I mean, the idea never even occurred to me. For one, that there were
any
kids in the palace, let alone that Prince Manfred might have a son my age—though now that I think about it, Dad did say Manfred had a kid who goes to the American school. Anyway, for two, even if I
had
known, who’d believe a prince would wander into the library and just start talking to me? Or that he’d know my name even before he came in?

I mean,
come on
.

Georg cannot be a prince. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He would have said something, wouldn’t he? Especially since, if it
is
true, and he really
is
a prince, then by definition, he is the Coolest Guy in School. Numero uno, supersnob, and guaranteed prom king. And way, way too popular to have been hanging out in the library on the—wrong side of the palace with Yours Truly. A guy like that would have made it crystal clear within two seconds of introducing himself that he was in his league, and I was in mine, even if we were now living under the same roof.

Oh, man. I bet he knows William and Harry. THAT William and Harry. He probably hangs with them on his school vacations and they ride horses or play polo or whatever snooty sport rich kids play. ‘Cause if Georg’s a prince, that means he has more money than I could ever hope to count. He goes to all the best parties. He’s probably even been to raves with ultralean, ultrasexy European supermodels.

I have not been to a rave. Ever. And neither have my boring, just-cool-enoughnot-to-get-picked-on friends.

What I
have
done is make a total ass of myself, acting so high and mighty sitting in
his
library. Telling him his country is
gray
and
boring,
while I live in a tiny little part of his father’s palace where I eat McChicken on a Formica table and sit on a chair with unbalanced legs.

My dad is going to kill me if he finds out what I said.

At least I didn’t tell Georg that most of my friends don’t know the difference between Schwerinborg and a smorgasbord. As if I didn’t make a big enough idiot of myself to start with.

“You didn’t know, did you?” my dad asks again, though he can tell what the answer is from my face, so I don’t even bother with the Valerie Shrug.

“I’m glad you met someone your age,” he adds in his I’m-your-dad-and-I-love-you voice, which means a
but
is sure to follow. And it did. “But you need to be careful with Georg. Remember when you were seated at the White House picnic last year with the Carew boys? Same thing applies here.”

I roll my eyes. Dad lectured me in the car the whole way to that picnic. I wasn’t to talk to the Carew twins—two megaspoiled freshmen who think they’re God’s gift—about anything personal. As if I would. I
can’t stand the Carews. Not because of politics, either. They’re just revolting as people.

And Dad’s lecture didn’t matter anyway, because the Carews had no intention of talking to me. In fact, they made a point of ignoring me so I’d
know
I was being ignored. Jerks.

“Dad”—I look him in the eye to make sure he knows he’s being ridiculous—“I’m not going to give Georg your credit card number or tell him you smoked pot in college or anything.”

“Not only is that not funny, you know it’s not true.” He turns on the light, but since I’m totally awake now, I don’t argue this time. I yank my feet up closer to my body so he can sit on the edge of my bed. When he does, he grabs one of my feet through the covers and wiggles it around, just like he did when I was a kid and I told him there was a dragon in my bed and he had to catch it before it ate my foot.

“Val, it’s not that I think you’re spilling your guts to a stranger. I know you’re good about keeping our family matters private, but I just thought I’d give you a word of
warning. That’s all. We’re new here, and Georg’s father is my boss. So let’s keep our ears and eyes open and learn our way around, all right?”

I nod. I’m a listen-first-speak-second kind of person, anyway.

“Georg’s an okay guy though, isn’t he?” I ask a few minutes later, after Dad pesters me about whether I got any studying done. Maybe Dad knows something about Georg. He hears all the dish about politicians, celebrities, and their kids, and he usually even knows which rumors are true.

“As far as I know, Prince Georg’s fine. He’s supposed to be quite intelligent, and he’s never gotten into any kind of trouble that would embarrass his family … like smoking cigarettes. Or pot.” He says this with a funny look that makes me wonder if he’s joking, or if he’s really thinking
I
might be taking the occasional drag at parties since I made the wisecrack about him doing it.

“Well, that’s good,” I say, not willing to give an inch. I’ve
never
smoked that stuff and Dad should know it. My grades are too important to me. Besides, I got in enough
trouble just getting caught with cigarettes last year. Getting busted with a joint would be something else entirely, especially if I got arrested. Thanks but no thanks.

“I’ll leave you alone then,” he says, giving my foot one last squeeze before walking to the door. I burrow back under the covers, but just before he shuts off the light, he turns around. “Valerie?”

“Yeah?”

“You have a lot of talent. I wish you’d shown me your drawings yourself.”

“They’re okay,” I say, but secretly I’m glad he likes them. Dad has taste, and he doesn’t give compliments easily.

“Have you ever shown them to your mother?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He stares at the sketch of Georg, and I realize he thinks this is a real bonding moment. He knows something about me that Mom doesn’t.

Then, of course, he ruins it by going and suggesting art lessons.

“Dad—” I shoot him my best warning stare before he gets going about all the
access I’ll have to great teachers here in Schwerinborg. He should remember that piano lessons killed any and all interest I had in the piano. There’s no way I’d do that to my sketches. Even if I never do end up making a career of it, what would I do to get through AP English every day?