The Princess Diaries (21 page)

"You’re the one who told all that stuff to Carol Fernandez." I said it totally calm.

"Of course I did," Grandmère said, with a kind of
So, what?
shrug.

"Grandma," I yelled. "How could you?"

She looked totally taken aback. She said, "Don’t call me Grandma."

"Seriously," I yelled. "Dad thinks Mr. Gianini did it! He and Mom had this totally big fight about it. She said it was you, but he wouldn’t believe her!"

Grandmère blew cigarette smoke out of her nostrils. "Phillipe," she said, "always was incredibly naïve."

"Well," I said, "I’m telling him. I’m telling him the truth."

Grandmère just waved a hand, as if to say
Whatever.

"Seriously," I said. "I’m telling him. He’s going to be really mad at you, Grandmère."

"He won’t. You needed the practice, darling. That piece in the
Post
was only the beginning. Soon you’ll be on the cover of
Vogue,
and then—"

"Grandmère!" I yelled. "I DO NOT WANT TO BE ON THE COVER OF
VOGUE!
DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? I JUST WANT TO PASS THE NINTH GRADE!"

Grandmère looked a little startled. "Well, all right, darling, all right. You needn’t
shout."

I don’t know how much of that sank in, but after dinner I noticed the reporters had all gone home. So maybe she heard me.

When I got home, Mr. Gianini was here, AGAIN. I had to go into my room to call my dad. I said, "Dad, it was Grandma, not Mr. Gianini, who told Carol Fernandez everything," and he said, "I know," in this miserable way.

"You
know?"
I could hardly believe it. "You
know,
and you haven’t said anything?"

He went, "Mia, your grandmother and I have a very complicated relationship."

He means he’s scared of her. I guess I can’t really blame him, considering the fact that she used to lock him in the dungeon and everything.

"Well," I said, "you could still apologize to Mom for what you said about Mr. Gianini."

He went, still sounding all miserable, "I know."

So I said, "Well? Are you going to?"

And he said, "Mia . . .  " Only now he sounded all exasperated. I figured I’d done enough good deeds for one day, and hung up.

After that, I sat around while Mr. Gianini helped me with my homework. I was too distracted by Josh Richter’s talking to me today to pay attention while Michael was trying to help me in G & T.

I guess I can sort of see how my mom likes Mr. G. He’s okay to just hang out with, you know, like in front of the TV. He doesn’t hog the remote, like some of my mom’s past boyfriends. And he doesn’t seem to care about sports at all.

About a half hour before I went to bed, my dad called back and asked to speak to my mother. She went into the room to talk to him, and when she came out again she looked all smug, in an I-told-you-so sort of way.

I wish I could tell Lilly about Josh Richter talking to me.

Friday, October 17, English

OH MY GOD!!!

JOSH AND LANA BROKE UP!!!!

I am not even kidding. It’s all over school. Josh broke up with her last night after crew practice. They were having dinner together at the Hard Rock Cafe, and he asked for his class ring back!!! Lana was completely humiliated under the pointy cone bra Gaultier made for Madonna!

I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

Lana wasn’t hanging around Josh’s locker this morning, like usual. And then when I saw her in Algebra, her eyes were all red and squinty, and her hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed, let alone washed, and her thigh-highs had come unglued and were all baggy around her knees. I never thought I’d see Lana Weinberger looking like a mess!!! Before class started, she was on her cell phone with Bergdorf’s, trying to convince them to take her Cultural Diversity Dance dress back even though she’d already removed the tags. Then, during class, she sat there with a big black marker crossing out "
Mrs. Josh Richter"
from where she’d written it all over her book covers.

It was so depressing. I could hardly factor my integers, I was so distracted.

I WISH I WERE

1. A size 36 double D

2. Good at math

3. A member of a world-famous rock band

4. Still friends with Lilly Moscovitz

5. Josh Richter’s new girlfriend

More Friday

You will not even believe what just happened. I was putting my Algebra book away in my locker, and Josh Richter was there getting his Trig notes, and he goes, in this totally casual way, "Hey, Mia, who you going to the dance with tomorrow?"

Needless to say, the fact that he actually spoke to me at all practically caused me to pass out. And then the fact that he was actually saying something that sounded like it might be a prelude to asking me out—well, I nearly threw up. I mean it. I felt really sick, but in a good way.

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)

1. Get a dress

2. Get hair done

3. 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.

Except that it does kind of make me feel weird, seeing Lana looking so sad and Josh looking like he doesn’t care at all. Today at lunch, he and his entourage sat with Tina and me, and Lana and her entourage sat back with the other cheerleaders. It was just so
strange.
Plus neither Josh nor any of his friends talked to me or to Tina. They just talked to each other. Which didn’t bother Tina any, but it kind of bothered me. Especially since Lana kept trying so hard not to look over at our table.

Tina didn’t say anything bad about Josh when I told her the news. She just got very excited and said tonight, when I spend the night, we can try on different outfits and experiment with our hair to see what will look best for tomorrow night. Well, I have no hair to experiment with, but we can experiment with her hair. Actually, Tina’s almost more excited than I am. She is a much more supportive friend than Lilly, who went, all sarcastically, when she heard: "Where’s he taking you to dinner? The Harley-Davidson Cafe?"

I said, "No," very sarcastically. "Tavern on the Green."

Lilly went, "Oh, how imaginative."

I suppose superartsy Boris is taking
her
somewhere in the Village.

Then Michael, who had been pretty quiet (for him) all through class, looked at Lars and went, "You’re going, too, right?"

And Lars went, "Oh, yes." And the two of them looked at each other in that infuriating way guys look at each other sometimes, like they have this secret. You know in sixth grade, when they made all of us girls go into this other room and watch a video about getting our periods and stuff? I bet while we were gone, the boys were watching a video about how to look at each other in that infuriating way.

Or maybe a cartoon or something.

But now that I think of it, Josh
is
kind of dissing Lana. I mean, he probably shouldn’t have asked out another girl so soon after breaking up with her—at least, not to something he was going to go to with her. Know what I mean? I kind of feel bad about the whole thing.

But not bad enough not to go.

FROM NOW ON I WILL

1. Be nicer to everyone, even Lana Weinberger.

2. Never ever bite my fingernails, even the fake ones.

3. Write faithfully in this journal every day.

4. Stop watching old
Baywatch
reruns and use my time wisely, like to study Algebra, or maybe improve the environment, or something.

Friday Night

Abbreviated lesson with Grandmère today because of my spending the night at Tina’s. Grandmère had pretty much gotten over my yelling at her yesterday about the press. She was totally into helping me figure out what I’m going to wear tomorrow night, just like I knew she would. She got on the phone with Chanel and set up an appointment for tomorrow to pick something out. It will have to be a rush job, and will cost a fortune, but she says she doesn’t care. It will be my first formal event as a representative of Genovia, and I have to "sparkle" (her word, not mine).

I pointed out to her that it was a school dance, not an inauguration ball or anything, and that it wasn’t even a prom, just a stupid dance to celebrate the diversity of the various racial and cultural groups that attend Albert Einstein High School. But Grandmère went ape anyway, and kept on worrying there wouldn’t be time to dye shoes to match my gown.

There’s a lot of stuff about being a girl I never realized. Like having your shoes match your gown. I didn’t know that was so important.

But Tina Hakim Baba sure knows. You should see her room. She must have every women’s magazine ever printed. They are in order on shelves all around her room, which, by the way, is huge and pink, much like the rest of her apartment, which takes up the entire top floor of her building. You hit PH on the elevator buttons, and the elevator opens in the Hakim Babas’ marble foyer, which really does have a fountain, only you’re not supposed to throw pennies in it, I found out.

And then there’s just room after room after room. They have a maid, a cook, a nanny, and a driver, all of whom live in. So you can imagine how many rooms there are, on top of the fact that Tina has three little sisters and a baby brother, and all of
them
have their own rooms, too.

Tina’s room has its own 37-inch TV with a Sony PlayStation. I can see now that I have been living a life of monastic simplicity compared to Tina.

Some people have all the luck.

Anyway, Tina is a lot different at home than she is at school. At home, she’s totally bubbly and outgoing. Her parents are pretty nice, too. Mr. Hakim Baba is really funny. He had a heart attack last year and isn’t allowed to eat practically anything but vegetables and rice. He has to lose twenty more pounds. He kept pinching my arm and going, "How do you stay so skinny?" I told him about my strict vegetarianism, and he went, "Oh," and shuddered really hard. The Hakim Babas’ cook has orders to prepare only vegetarian meals, which was good for me. We had couscous and vegetable goulash. It was all quite delicious.