The Princess Diaries (6 page)

At least, that’s what she said in her oral report in World Civ the other day.

And I guess I kind of agree with Lilly, especially about Prince Charles—he did treat Diana like dirt—but my dad isn’t like that. Yeah, he plays polo and all, but he would never dream of subjecting anyone to taxation without representation.

Still, I was pretty sure the fact that the people of Genovia don’t have to pay taxes wasn’t going to make any difference to Lilly.

I knew the first thing my dad would do was call Mom, and she’d be all worried. I hate making my mom worry. Even though she can be very irresponsible at times, it’s only with things like bills and the groceries. She’s never irresponsible about
me.
Like, I have friends whose parents don’t even remember sometimes to give them subway fare. I have friends who tell their parents they’re going to So-and-So’s apartment and then instead they go out drinking, and their parents never find out because they don’t even check with the other kid’s parents.

My mom’s not like that. She ALWAYS checks.

So I knew it wasn’t fair to run off like that and make her worry. I didn’t care much then about what my dad thought. I was pretty much hating him by then. But I just had to be alone for a little while. I mean, it takes some getting used to, finding out you’re a princess. I guess some girls might like it, but not me. I’ve never been good at girly stuff, you know, like putting on makeup and wearing panty hose and stuff. I mean, I can
do
it, if I have to, but I’d rather not.

Much
rather not.

Anyway, I don’t know how, but my feet sort of knew where they were going, and before I knew it I was at the zoo.

I love the Central Park Zoo. I always have, since I was a little kid. It’s way better than the Bronx Zoo, because it’s really small and cozy, and the animals are much friendlier, especially the seals and the polar bears. I love polar bears. At the Central Park Zoo, they have this one polar bear, and all he does all day long is the backstroke. I swear! He was on the news once because this animal psychologist was worried he was under too much stress. It must suck to have people looking at you all day. But then they bought him some toys, and after that he was all right. He just kicks back in his enclosure—they don’t have cages at the Central Park Zoo, they have enclosures—and watches you watching him. Sometimes he holds a ball while he does it. I love that bear.

So after I forked over a couple of dollars to get in—that’s the other good thing about the zoo: it’s cheap—I paid a little call on the polar bear. He appeared to be doing fine. Much better than I was, at the moment. I mean,
his
dad hadn’t told him he was the heir to the throne of anywhere. I wondered where that polar bear had come from. I hoped he was from Iceland.

After a while it got too crowded at the polar bear enclosure, so then I went into the penguin house. It smells kind of bad in here, but it’s fun. There are these windows that look underwater, so you can see the penguins swimming around, sliding on the rocks and having a good penguin time. Little kids put their hands on the glass, and when a penguin swims toward them, they start screaming. It totally cracks me up. There’s a bench you can sit on, too, and that’s where I’m sitting now, writing this. You get used to the smell after a while. I guess you can get used to anything.

Oh my God, I can’t believe I just wrote that! I will NEVER get used to being Princess Amelia Renaldo! I don’t even know who that is! It sounds like the name of some stupid line of makeup, or of somebody from a Disney movie who’s been missing and just recovered her memory, or something.

What am I going to do? I CAN’T move to Genovia, I just CAN’T!! Who would look after Fat Louie? My mom can’t. She forgets to feed
herself,
let alone a
CAT.

I’m sure they won’t let me have a cat in the palace. At least, not a cat like Louie, who weighs twenty-five pounds and eats socks. He’d scare all the ladies-in-waiting.

Oh, God.
What am I going to do?

If Lana Weinberger finds out about this, I’m dead.

Even Later on Thursday

Of course, I couldn’t hide out in the penguin house forever. Eventually, they flicked the lights and said the zoo was closing. I put my journal away and filed out with everybody else. I grabbed a downtown bus and went home, where I was sure I was going to get it BIG TIME from my mom.

What I didn’t count on was getting it from BOTH my parents at the same time. This was a first.

"Where have you been, young lady?" my mom wanted to know. She was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, the telephone between them.

My dad said, at the exact same time, "We were worried sick!"

I thought I was in for the grounding of a lifetime, but all they wanted to know was whether I was all right. I assured them that I was and apologized for going all Jennifer Love Hewitt on them. I just needed to be alone, I said.

I was really worried they’d start in on me, but they totally didn’t. My mom did try to make me eat some Ramen, but I wouldn’t, because it was beef flavored. And then my dad offered to send his driver to Nobu to pick up some blackened sea bass, but I was like, "Really, Dad, I just want to go to bed." Then my mom started feeling my head and stuff, thinking I was sick. This nearly made me start crying again. I guess my dad recognized my expression from the Plaza, since all of a sudden he was like, "Helen, just leave her alone."

To my surprise, she did. And so I went into my bathroom and closed the door and took a long, hot bath, then got into my favorite pajamas, the cool red flannel ones, found Fat Louie where he was trying to hide under the futon couch (he doesn’t like my dad so much), and went to bed.

Before I fell asleep, I could hear my dad talking to my mom in the kitchen for a long, long time. His voice was rumbly, like thunder. It sort of reminded me of Captain Picard’s voice on
Star Trek: The Next Generation.

My dad actually has a lot in common with Captain Picard. You know, he’s white and bald and has to rule over a small populace.

Except that Captain Picard always makes everything okay by the end of the episode, and I sincerely doubt everything will be okay for me.

Friday, October 3, Homeroom

Today when I woke up, the pigeons that live on the fire escape outside my window were cooing away (Fat Louie was on the windowsill—well, as much of him as could fit on the windowsill, anyway—watching them), and the sun was shining, and I actually got up on time and didn’t hit the snooze button seven thousand times. I took a shower and didn’t cut my legs shaving them, found a fairly unwrinkled blouse at the bottom of my closet, and even got my hair to look sort of halfway passable. I was in a good mood. It was
Friday.
Friday is my favorite day, besides Saturday and Sunday. Fridays always mean two days—two glorious, relaxing days—of NO Algebra are coming my way.

And then I walked out into the kitchen and there was all this pink light coming down through the skylight right on my mom, who was wearing her best kimono and making French toast using Egg Beaters instead of real eggs, even though I’m no longer ovo-lacto since I realized eggs aren’t fertilized so they could never have been baby chicks anyway.

And I was all set to thank her for thinking of me, and then I heard this rustle.

And there was my DAD sitting at the dining room table (well, really it’s just a table, since we don’t have a dining room, but whatever), reading
The New York Times
and wearing a suit.

A
suit.
At seven o’clock in the morning.

And then I remembered. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it:

I’m a
princess.

Oh my God. Everything good about my day just went right out the window after that.

As soon as he saw me, my dad was all, "Ah, Mia."

I knew I was in for it. He only says "
Ah, Mia"
when he’s about to give me a big lecture.

He folded his paper all carefully and laid it down. My dad always folds papers carefully, making the edges all neat. My mom never does this. She usually crumples the pages up and leaves them, out of order, on the futon couch or next to the toilet. This kind of thing drives my father insane and is probably the real reason why they never got married.

My mom, I saw, had set the table with our best Kmart plates, the ones with the blue stripes on them, and the green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses from Ikea. She had even put a bunch of fake sunflowers in the middle of the table in a yellow vase. She had done all that to cheer me up, I know, and she’d probably gotten up really early to do it, too. But instead of cheering me up, it just made me sadder.

Because I bet they don’t use green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses for breakfast at the palace in Genovia.

"We need to talk, Mia," my dad said. This is how his worst lectures always start. Except this time he looked at me kind of funny before he started. "What’s wrong with your hair?"

I put my hand up to my head. "Why?" I thought my hair looked good, for a change.

"Nothing is wrong with her hair, Phillipe," my mom said. She usually tries to ward off my dad’s lectures, if she can. "Come and sit down, Mia, and have some breakfast. I even heated up the syrup for the French toast, the way you like it."

I appreciated this gesture on my mom’s part. I really did. But I was not going to sit down and talk about my future in Genovia. I mean, come on. So I was all, "Uh, I’d love to, really, but I gotta go. I have a test in World Civ today, and I promised Lilly I’d meet her to go over our notes together—"

"
Sit down."

Boy, my dad can really sound like a starship captain in the Federation when he wants to.

I sat. My mom shoveled some French toast onto my plate. I poured syrup over it and took a bite, just to be polite. It tasted like cardboard.

"Mia," my mom said. She was still trying to ward off my dad’s lecture. "I know how upset you must be about all of this. But really, it isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be."

Oh, right. All of a sudden you tell me I’m a princess, and I’m supposed to be happy about it?

"I mean," my mom went on, "most girls would probably be delighted to find out their father is a prince!"

No girls I know. Actually, that’s not true. Lana Weinberger would probably
love
to be a princess. In fact, she already thinks she is one.

"Just think of all the lovely things you could have if you went to live in Genovia." My mom’s face totally lit up as she started listing the lovely things I could have if I went to live in Genovia, but her voice sounded strange, as if she were playing a mom on TV or something. "Like a car! You know how impractical it is to have a car here in the city. But in Genovia, when you turn sixteen, I’m sure Dad will buy you a—"

I pointed out that there are enough problems with pollution in Europe without my contributing to it. Diesel emissions are one of the largest contributors to the destruction of the ozone layer.

"But you’ve always wanted a horse, haven’t you? Well, in Genovia you could have one. A nice gray one with spots on its back—"

That hurt.

"Mom," I said, my eyes all filling up with tears. I completely couldn’t help it. Suddenly, I was bawling all over again. "What are you
doing?
Do you
want
me to go live with Dad? Is that it? Are you tired of me or something? Do you want me to go live with Dad so you and Mr. Gianini can . . .  can . . . "

I couldn’t go on because I started crying so hard. But by then my mom was crying, too. She jumped up out of her chair and came around the end of the table and started hugging me, saying, "Oh, no, honey! How could you think something like that?" She stopped sounding like a TV mom. "I just want what’s best for you!"

"As do I," my dad said, looking annoyed. He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning back in his chair, watching us in an irritated way.

"Well, what’s best for me is to stay right here and finish high school," I told him. "And then I’m going to join Greenpeace and help save the whales."

My dad looked even
more
irritated at that. "You are
not
joining Greenpeace," he said.

"I am, too," I said. It was totally hard to talk, because I was crying and all, but I told him, "I’m going to go to Iceland to save the baby seals, too."

"You most certainly are not." My dad didn’t just look annoyed. Now he looked mad. "You are going to go to college. Vassar, I think. Maybe Sarah Lawrence."

That made me cry even more.

But before I could say anything, my mom held up a hand and was like, "Phillipe, don’t. We aren’t accomplishing anything here. Mia has to get to school, anyway. She’s already late—"

I started looking around for my backpack and coat real fast. "Yeah," I said. "I gotta renew my MetroCard."

My dad made this weird French noise he makes sometimes. It’s halfway between a snort and a sigh. It kind of sounds like
Pfuit!
Then he said, "Lars will drive you."

I told my dad that this was unnecessary since I meet Lilly every day at Astor Place, where we catch the uptown 6 train together.

"Lars can pick up your little friend, too."

I looked at my mom. She was looking at my dad. Lars is my dad’s driver. He goes everywhere my dad goes. For as long as I’ve known my dad—okay, my whole life—he’s always had a driver, usually a big beefy guy who used to work for the president of Israel or somebody like that.

Now that I think about it, of course I realize these guys aren’t really drivers at all but bodyguards.

Duh.

Okay, so the last thing I wanted was for my dad’s bodyguard to drive me to school. How would I ever explain it to Lilly?
Oh, don’t mind him, Lilly. He’s just my dad’s chauffeur.
Yeah, right. The only person at Albert Einstein High School who gets dropped off by a chauffeur is this totally rich Saudi Arabian girl named Tina Hakim Baba, whose dad owns some big oil company, and everybody makes fun of her because her parents are all worried she’ll get kidnapped between Seventy-fifth and Madison, where our school is, and Seventy-fifth and Fifth, where she lives. She even has a bodyguard who follows her around from class to class and talks on a walkie-talkie to the chauffeur. This seems a little extreme, if you ask me.