The Princess Diaries (17 page)

G & T: none

French:
pour demain, une vignette culturelle

Biology: none

Tuesday Night

Grandmère says Tina Hakim Baba sounds like a much better friend for me than Lilly Moscovitz. But I think she is only saying that because Lilly’s parents are psychoanalysts, and it turns out Tina’s dad is this Arabian sheikh and her mom is related to the king of Sweden, so they are more appropriate for the heir to the throne of Genovia to hang out with.

The Hakim Babas are also superrich, according to my grandmother. They own about a gazillion oil wells. Grandmère told me when I go have dinner with them on Friday night, I have to bring a gift and wear my Gucci loafers. I asked Grandmère what kind of gift, and she said breakfast. She’s special-ordering it from Balducci’s and having it delivered Saturday morning.

Being a princess is hard work.

I just remembered: At lunch today Tina had a new book with her. It had a cover just like the last one, only this time the heroine was a brunette. This one was called
My Secret Love,
and it was about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with a rich boy who never notices her. Then the girl’s uncle kidnaps the boy and holds him for ransom, and she has to bathe his wounds and help him to escape and stuff, and of course he falls madly in love with her. Tina said she already read the end, and the girl gets to go and live with the rich boy’s parents after her uncle goes to jail and can no longer support her.

How come things like that don’t ever happen to
me?

Wednesday, October 15, Homeroom

No Lilly again today. Lars suggested we’d make better time if we just drove straight to school and didn’t stop by her place every day. I guess he’s right.

It was really weird when we pulled up to Albert Einstein. All the people who normally hang around outside before school starts, smoking and sitting on Joe, the stone lion, were all clustered into these groups looking at something. I suppose somebody’s dad has been accused of money laundering again. Parents can be so self-centered: Before they do something illegal, they should totally stop and think about how their kids are going to feel if they get caught.

If I were Chelsea Clinton, I would change my name and move to Iceland.

I just walked right on by to show I wasn’t going to have any part in gossip. A bunch of people stared at me. I guess Michael’s right: It really
has
gotten around, about me stabbing Lana with that Nutty Royale. Either that or my hair was sticking up in some weird way. But I checked in the mirror in the girls’ room and it wasn’t.

A bunch of girls ran out of the bathroom giggling like crazy when I went in, though.

Sometimes I wish I lived on a desert island. Really. With nobody else around for hundreds of miles. Just me, the ocean, the sand, and a coconut tree.

And maybe a high-definition 37-inch TV with a satellite dish and a Sony PlayStation with Bandicoot, for when I get bored.

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

1. The most commonly asked question at Albert Einstein High School is "Do you have any gum?"

2. Bees and bulls are attracted to the color red.

3. In my homeroom, it sometimes takes up to half an hour just to take attendance.

4. I miss being best friends with Lilly Moscovitz.

Later on Wednesday, Before Algebra

This totally weird thing happened. Josh Richter came up to his locker to put his Trig book away, and he said, "How you doin’?" to me as I was getting out my Algebra notebook.

I swear to God I am not making this up.

I was in such total shock, I nearly dropped my backpack. I don’t have any idea what I said to him. I think I said I was fine. I
hope
I said I was fine.

Why is Josh Richter speaking to me?

It must have been another one of those synaptic breakdowns, like the one he had at Bigelows.

Then Josh slammed his locker closed,
looked right down into my face
—he’s really tall—and said, "See you later."

Then he walked away.

It took me five minutes to stop hyperventilating.

His eyes are so blue they hurt to look at.

Wednesday, Principal Gupta’s Office

It’s over.

I’m dead.

That’s it.

Now I know what everyone was looking at outside. I know why they were whispering and giggling. I know why those girls ran out of the bathroom. I know why Josh Richter talked to me.

My picture is on the cover of the
Post.

That’s right. The
New York Post.
Read by millions of New Yorkers daily.

Oh, yeah. I’m dead.

It’s a pretty good picture of me, actually. I guess somebody took it as I was leaving the Plaza Sunday night, after dinner with Grandmère and my dad. I’m going down the steps just outside the revolving door. I’m sort of smiling, only not at the camera. I don’t remember anybody taking my picture, but I guess somebody did.

Superimposed over the photo are the words
Princess Amelia,
and then in smaller letters
New York’s Very Own Royal.

Great. Just great.

Mr. Gianini was the one who figured it out. He said he was walking to catch the subway to work and he saw it on the newsstand. He called my mother. My mom was taking a shower, though, and didn’t hear the phone. Mr. G left a message. But my mom never checks the machine in the morning, because everyone who knows her knows she is not a morning person, so nobody ever calls before noon. When Mr. G called again, she had already left for her studio, where she never answers the phone, because she wears a Walkman when she paints, so she can listen to Howard Stern.

So then Mr. G had no choice but to call my dad at the Plaza, which was pretty nervy of him, if you think about it. According to Mr. G, my dad blew a gasket. He told Mr. G that until he could get there, I should be sent to the principal’s office, where I would be "safe."

My dad has obviously never met Principal Gupta.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. She hasn’t been so bad. She showed me the paper and said, kind of sarcastically, but in a nice way, "You might have shared this with me, Mia, when I asked you the other day if everything was all right at home."

I blushed. "Well," I said, "I didn’t think anybody would believe me."

"It is," Principal Gupta said, "a bit unbelievable."

That’s what the story on page 2 of the
Post
said, too.
FAIRY TALE COMES TRUE FOR ONE LUCKY NEW YORK KID
was how the reporter, one Ms. Carol Fernandez, put it. Like I had won the lottery, or something. Like I should be
happy
about it.

Ms. Carol Fernandez went on at length about my mom, "the raven-haired avant-garde painter Helen Thermopolis," and about my dad, "the handsome Prince Phillipe of Genovia," who’d "successfully battled his way back from a bout of testicular cancer." Oh, thanks, Carol Fernandez, for letting all of New York know my dad’s only got one you-know-what.

Then she went on to describe me as "the statuesque beauty who is the product of Helen and Phillipe’s tempestuous whirlwind college romance."

HELLO??? CAROL FERNANDEZ, ARE YOU ON CRACK????

I am NOT a statuesque beauty. Yeah, I’m TALL. I’m way TALL. But I am no beauty. I want what Carol Fernandez has been smoking, if she thinks
I’M
beautiful.

No wonder everybody was laughing at me. This is SO embarrassing. I mean, really.

Oh, here comes my dad. Boy, does
he
look mad. . . . 

More Wednesday, English

It isn’t fair.

This is totally, completely unfair.

I mean, anybody else’s dad would have let them come home. Anybody else’s dad, if his kid’s picture was on the front of the
Post,
would say, "Maybe you should skip school for a few days until things calm down."

Anybody else’s dad would have been like, "Maybe you should change schools. How do you feel about Iowa? Would you like to go to school in Iowa?"

But oh, no. Not
my
dad. Because
he’s
a prince. And he says members of the royal family of Genovia do not "go home" when there is a crisis. No, they stay where they are and slug it out.

Slug it out. I think my dad has something in common with Carol Fernandez: They’re BOTH on crack.

Then my dad reminded me that it’s not like I’m not getting paid for this. Right! One hundred lousy bucks! One hundred lousy bucks a day to be publicly ridiculed and humiliated.

Those baby seals better be grateful, that’s all I have to say.

So here I am in English, and everybody is whispering about me and pointing at me like I’m a victim of alien abduction or something, and my dad expects me to sit here and let them, because I’m a princess and that’s what princesses do.

But these kids are
brutal.

I tried to tell my dad that. I was like, "Dad, you don’t understand. They’re all laughing at me."

And all he said was, "I’m sorry, honey. You’re just going to have to tough it out. You knew this was going to happen eventually. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be quite this soon, but it’s probably just as well to get it over with. . . . "

Um, hello? I did
not
know this was going to happen eventually. I thought I was going to be able to keep this whole princess thing a secret. My lovely plan about only being a princess in Genovia is falling apart. I have to be a princess right here in Manhattan, and believe me, that is no picnic.

I was so mad at my dad for telling me I had to go back to class, I accused him of having ratted me out to Carol Fernandez himself.

He got all offended. "
Me?
I don’t know any Carol Fernandez." He shot this funny look at Mr. Gianini, who was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking all concerned.

"What?" Mr. G said, going from concerned to surprised real fast. "
Me?
I’d never even
heard
of Genovia until this morning."

"Geez, Dad," I said. "Don’t blame Mr. G.
He
had nothing to do with it."

My dad didn’t look very convinced. "Well,
somebody
leaked the story to the press. . . . " He said it in this mean way, too. You could totally tell he thought Mr. G had done it. But it couldn’t have been Mr. Gianini. Carol Fernandez wrote about stuff in her story that there’s no way Mr. G could know, because even
Mom
doesn’t know about it. Like how Miragnac has a private airstrip. I never told her about that.

But when I told my dad that, he just shot Mr. G a suspicious look. "Well," he said again. "I’m just going to give this Carol Fernandez a call and see who her source is."

And while my dad was doing that, I got stuck with Lars. I’m not kidding. Just like Tina Hakim Baba, I now have a bodyguard trailing around after me from class to class. Like I’m not enough of a laughingstock already.

I now have an armed escort.

I totally tried to get out of it. I was like, "Dad, I can seriously take care of myself," but he was completely rigid and said that even though Genovia is a small country, it is a very wealthy country, and he cannot take the risk of my being kidnaped and held for ransom like the boy in
My Secret Love,
only my dad didn’t say that because he’s never read
My Secret Love.

I said, "Dad, no one is going to kidnap me. This is
school,"
but he wouldn’t go for it. He asked Principal Gupta if it was all right, and she said, "Of course, Your Highness."

Your Highness! Principal Gupta called my dad Your Highness! If it hadn’t been all serious and stuff, I would have wet my pants laughing.

The only good thing that has come out of this is that Principal Gupta let me off detention for the rest of the week, claiming that having my picture in the
Post
is punishment enough.

But really the only reason is that she is totally charmed by my father. He pulled such a Jean-Luc Picard on her, you wouldn’t believe it, calling her Madam Principal and apologizing for all the fuss. I practically expected him to kiss her hand, he was flirting so hard with her. And Principal Gupta has been married a million years, and has this big black mole on the side of her nose. And she totally fell for it! She was eating it up!

I wonder if Tina Hakim Baba will still sit with me at lunch. Well, if she does, at least our bodyguards will have something to do: They can compare civilian defense tactics.

More Wednesday, French Class

I guess I should have my picture on the front of the
Post
more often.

Suddenly I am very popular.

I walked into the cafeteria (I told Lars to keep five paces behind me at all times; he kept stepping on the backs of my combat boots), and Lana Weinberger, of all people, came up to me while I was in the jet line getting my tray, and said, "Hey, Mia. Why don’t you come and sit with us?"

I am not even kidding. That lousy hypocrite wants to be friends with me now that I’m a princess.

Tina was right behind me in line (well, Lars was behind me; Tina was behind Lars, and Tina’s bodyguard was behind her). But did Lana invite Tina to join her? Of course not. The
New York Post
hadn’t called
Tina
a "statuesque beauty." Short, heavyset girls—even one whose father is an Arab sheikh—aren’t good enough to sit by
Lana.
Oh, no. Only purebred Genovian princesses are good enough to sit by
Lana.

I nearly threw up all over my lunch tray.

"No, thanks, Lana," I said. "I already have someone to sit with."

You should have seen Lana’s face. The last time I saw her look that shocked, a sugar cone had been stuck to her chest.

Later, when we were sitting down, Tina could only nibble at her salad. She hadn’t said a word about the princess thing. Meanwhile, though, everybody in the whole cafeteria—including the geeks, who never notice anything—were staring at our table. Let me tell you, it was way uncomfortable. I could feel Lilly’s eyes boring into me. She hadn’t said anything to me yet, but I think she had to have known. Nothing much escapes Lilly.