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Title: The Princess diaries
Description: This book including a plethora of interesting English words for students will surely a perfect document for them to improve their language skills as well as learn much vocabulary.
Description: This book including a plethora of interesting English words for students will surely a perfect document for them to improve their language skills as well as learn much vocabulary.
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MEG CABOT
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express her gratitude to the people who contributed in so
many ways to the creation and publication of this book: Beth Ader, Jennifer Brown,
Barbara Cabot, Charles and Bonnie Egnatz, Emily Faith, Laura Langlie, Ron
Markman, Abigail McAden, A
...
“Whatever comes,” she said, “cannot alter one thing
...
It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed
in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no
one knows it
...
My mom thinks I’m repressing my feelings about this
...
Gianini’s cool
...
He’s cool if you’re Lilly Moscovitz
...
Gianini might put his tongue
in my mom’s mouth
...
Later on Friday
I was measuring my chest and totally not thinking about the fact that my mom was
out with my Algebra teacher
...
Sunday, September 28
My dad called again today, and this time Mom reallywas at her studio, so I didn’t
feel so bad about lying
...
Gianini very closely for signs that he might not have had as
good a time on his date
...
I got home from school, and my mom was
there
...
Well, not here in the loft
...
Notes from G & T
Lilly—I can’t stand this
...
I guess now I know why my dad is so concerned
...
Even Later on Thursday
Of course, I couldn’t hide out in the penguin house forever
...
Friday, October 3, Homeroom
Today when I woke up, the pigeons that live on the fire escape outside my window
were cooing away
...
Oh, she swallowed the whole
story
...
Gianini’s help session after school
...
Believe me
...
Later on Saturday
The whole way home from Lilly’s I worried about what my mom and dad were
going to say
...
I mean, Saturday night, alone with my
DAD!
Sunday, October 5
I can’t believe Mr
...
I can’t believe he told my mother I skipped his
stupid review session
...
m
...
What will
happen
...
m
...
m
...
Monday, October 6, 9 a
...
Realized in the car on the way to school that I could have taken the laces out of my
high-tops
...
I admit it
...
Fat lot of good it did me, too
...
Wednesday, October 8
Oh no
...
Thursday, October 9
I found out why
...
Friday, October 10
Princess lessons
...
I have to go straight
...
m
...
Saturday, October 11
I can never go to school again
...
I will never leave
this loft, ever, ever again
...
Past Midnight, Sunday, October 12
She still hasn’t called
...
I am so embarrassed
...
You will never believe
what just happened
...
According to my mom, who just came into my room, Mr
...
Even Later on Sunday
I just turned on my computer to look up some stuff about Afghanistan on the
Internet
...
Monday, October 13, Algebra
When Lars pulled up in front of Lilly’s building to pick her up for school, her
doorman said she’d already left
...
Later on Monday
Oh my God
...
Nothing like this has ever happened to me
before!
Monday Night
Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do now
...
Tuesday, October 14, Homeroom
No Lilly again this morning
...
But I made Lars stop
at her place anyway
...
Oh my God
...
But it must be true, since Shameeka just told
More Tuesday, English
No boy will ever ask me out
...
EVERYONE has a date to the Cultural Diversity
Dance
...
Tuesday Night
Grandmère says Tina Hakim Baba sounds like a much better friend for me than
Lilly Moscovitz
...
Lars suggested we’d make better time if we just drove straight
to school
...
Josh Richter came up to his locker to put his
Trig book away
...
I’m dead
...
This is totally, completely unfair
...
Wednesday Night
No wonder my dad was so mad about Carol Fernandez’s article! When Lars and I
walked out of Albert Einstein
...
Thursday, October 16, Homeroom
Well, this morning my face was on the covers of theDaily News andNew York
Newsday
...
Gianini was totally trying to teach us about the Cartesian
plane
...
More Thursday, French
When I went to my locker after lunch to get my books for French, Josh was there
...
What wouldn’t he like?
...
I was putting my Algebra book away
in my locker
...
Okay, so I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is
...
Saturday, October 18
When I got home, the first thing I did was check to make sure Josh hadn’t called to
cancel
...
Saturday Night,
Ladies’ Room, Tavern on the Green
Okay, so I lied
...
I made Lars carry it
...
In my dream, Lilly and I weren’t fighting
anymore
...
Dad wanted to find out
how things went at the dance
...
My mom thinks I’m repressing my feelings about this
...
I think it’s really neat
...
”
Mom says, “I don’t think you’re being honest with me
...
She tells me she wants me to write down my feelings
in this book, since, she says, I obviously don’t feel I can talk about them with her
...
I’m practically the biggest freak
in the entire school
...
How muchmore of a freak could I be?
If people at school find out about this, I’m dead
...
Dead
...
There are four million people in Manhattan, right? That makes about two million
of them guys
...
Gianini
...
She can’t go out with some guy she met at
D’Agostinos or wherever
...
She has to go out with my Algebra teacher
...
Thanks a whole lot
...
Gianini’s cool
...
He’s cool if you’re Lilly Moscovitz
...
He’s not so cool if you’re flunking Algebra, like me
...
He’s not so cool if he calls your mother in for a parent/teacher
conference to talk about how you’re flunking Algebra, then ASKS HER OUT
...
Not that I’ve actually seen them do this
...
And I don’t think my mom would let a guy put his tongue in her mouth on the first
date
...
I saw Josh Richter stick his tongue in Lana Weinberger’s mouth last week
...
It kind of grossed me out
...
The other day Lilly
and I were at Bigelows picking up some alpha hydroxy for Lilly’s mom, and I noticed
Josh waiting at the checkout counter
...
”
He was buying Drakkar Noir, a men’s cologne
...
Now I can smell Josh whenever I want to, in the privacy of my own home
...
She said he probably thought I looked familiar but couldn’t place my face
without the cement block walls of Albert Einstein High behind me
...
The truth is, when he’s away from Lana and all
his jock friends, Josh is a totally different person
...
The kind of person who can see beyond
all that into the depths of a girl’s soul
...
Lilly says I have an overactive imagination and a pathological need to invent
drama in my life
...
G is a
classic example
...
“Tellher you don’t
want her going out with him
...
You’re always going around,
lying about how you feel
...
”
Oh, right
...
She’s so totally happy
about this date, it’s enough to make me want to throw up
...
I’m not even kidding
...
I had already opened the Suzie’s Chinese take-out menu, and she says, “Oh, no
cold sesame noodles tonight, honey
...
”
Pasta! My mom madepasta!
She even observed my rights as a vegetarian and didn’t put any meatballs in the
sauce
...
THINGS TO DO
1
...
Finish FOIL worksheet for Mr
...
Stop telling Lilly everything
4
...
World Civ report on Iceland (5 pages, double space) 6
...
Drop off laundry 8
...
Be more assertive 10
...
Gianini might put his tongue
in my mom’s mouth tomorrow night during their date
...
He asked me a really easy question—I swear, he saves all the easy ones for me, like he
doesn’t want me to feel left out or something—and I totally didn’t even hear it
...
I got hit by this giant wave of perfume,
and then Lana hissed in this really mean voice:
“FREAK
...
Like it was spelled FUR-REEK
...
I mean, yeah,
she’s pretty
...
Doesn’t henotice?
Maybe Lana is nice to Josh, though
...
He is the best-looking
boy in Albert Einstein High School
...
Not Josh, though
...
I am not kidding
...
Today I noticed that Mr
...
Why would
you want to go out with a guy whose nostrils stick out so much? I asked Lilly this at
lunch and she said, “I’ve never noticed his nostrils before
...
She says I’m taking my anxiety over the fact
that this is only our first month in high school and I already have an F in something,
and transferring it to anxiety about Mr
...
She says this is called
displacement
...
Today after school the Drs
...
I mean,
Lilly and I were just sitting there playing Boggle
...
And by the way, Mia, how do you feel about your mother
starting to date your Algebra teacher?”
I said, “I feel fine about it
...
I don’t want my mom to know how weird I
feel about this, not when she’s so happy about it
...
He immediately started laughing his head off, even though I don’t see anything funny
about it
...
Now Lilly’s brother Michael knows
...
He’s in fifth period Gifted
and Talented class with me and Lilly, which is the biggest joke of a class, because Mrs
...
She hates it when she has to come out of the
teachers’ lounge, which is right across the hall from the G & T room, to yell at us
...
I’m supposed to use it for catching up on my Algebra homework
...
Hill never checks to see what we’re doing in G & T, which is
probably good, since mostly what we’re all doing is figuring out ways to lock the new
Russian kid, who’s supposedly this musical genius, in the supply closet so we don’t have
to listen to any more Stravinsky on his stupid violin
...
G
...
I can’t offer to do his
homework, or anything
...
Michael has gotten
all straight A’s his entire life (just like Josh Richter)
...
What couldI do for someone like that?
Not that Michael’s perfect, or anything
...
Michael isn’t even on the debate team
...
Instead, Michael
spends almost all of his time in his room
...
I bet he’s in there making a bomb
...
Occasionally, Michael comes out of his room and makes sarcastic comments
...
Even though he does not believe
in organized sports, I have noticed that Michael has a really nice chest
...
I have never mentioned this to Lilly
...
Because in the end Michael just said, in this disgusted voice,
“Forget it, okay, Thermopolis?” and went back into his room
...
How embarrassing! Supposing Josh Richter starts sexually harassing me someday
(I wish) and I don’t notice? God, I’m so stupid sometimes
...
G, since Michael has no friends
...
Gianini’s nostrils sticking out so much, since I’m not the one who has
to look at them, my mom is
...
If I don’t flunk, that is, and have to go to summer school
...
Define set: collection of objects; element or member belongs to a set
A = {Gilligan, Skipper, Mary Ann}
rule specifies each element
A = {x|xis one of the castaways on Gilligan’s Island}
Friday, September 26
LILLY MOSCOVITZ’S LIST OF HOTTEST GUYS(compiled during World Civ,
with commentary by Mia Thermopolis)
1
...
Blond hair, often falling
into his clear blue eyes, and that sweet, sleepy smile
...
Boris Pelkowski(strongly disagree
...
Plus he tucks his school sweater into his pants, instead of wearing it out, like a normal
person) 3
...
Daniel Day Lewis inLast of the Mohicans(agree—stay alive, no matter what
occurs) 5
...
Mr
...
Seen opening the door to the teachers’
lounge for Mademoiselle Klein) 7
...
Who IS that guy? They should give him his own TV series)
8
...
Quinn Medicine Woman’s boyfriend(whatever happened to him? He was hot!) 9
...
It would be so cool to date a musician—just not
Boris Pelkowski)
Later on Friday
I was measuring my chest and totally not thinking about the fact that my mom was
out with my Algebra teacher when my dad called
...
Which is so weird, because obviously Dad knows Mom
dates
...
Gianini
...
Gianini, I was sitting
there practicing the FOIL method (first, outside, inside, last; first, outside, inside, last—
Oh my God, when am I ever going to have to actually use the FOIL method in real life?
WHEN???) and all of a sudden Mr
...
”
Only for some reason for a second I thought he said SEXUALLY, not socially
...
I mean like BURNING
...
Gianini, it doesn’t bother me at all
...
Gianini said, “Because if it bothers you, we can talk about it
...
But all I said was, “Really, it doesn’t bother me
...
I mean, it’s just a date, right? Why get upset about one
measly date?”
That was when Mr
...
I really like your mother
...
Because if you do anything to make her cry, I’ll kick your butt
...
Why is it that the only
time I can tell the truth is when it’s guaranteed to get me into trouble?
But I guess Iam feeling sort of weird about the whole thing
...
Mr
...
He smiled in this funny way and said, “I
have no intention of making your mother cry, but if I ever do, you have my permission
to kick my butt
...
Anyway, Dad sounded really weird on the phone
...
Transatlantic phone calls suck because I can hear the ocean swishing around in the
background and it makes me all nervous, like the fish are listening, or something
...
He wanted to talk to Mom
...
Maybe it was Grandmère
...
My breasts have grown exactlynone since last summer
...
I
didnot have a growth spurt when I turned fourteen, like she did
...
I only have growth spurts UP, not OUT
...
Now if anybody asks me to the Cultural Diversity Dance next month (yeah, right) I
won’t be able to wear a strapless dress because there isn’t anything on my chest to hold
it up
...
Mom was up already, which was weird, because
usually she sleeps later than me, andI’m a teenager,I’m supposed to be the one sleeping
all the time
...
Anyway, she was in there, humming in a happy way and making pancakes
...
Of course she had a fabulous time
...
G!) and then walked around the West Village and went to some bar and sat outside
in the back garden until nearly two in the morning, just talking
...
Okay
...
They’re going out again this week
...
Today Lilly is shooting a spoof of the movieThe Blair Witch Project for her TV
show,Lilly Tells It Like It Is
...
All that’s found of them is film
footage and some piles of sticks
...
Lilly intends to take a hand-held camera down to
Washington Square Park and film the tourists who come up to us and ask if we know
how to get to Green Witch Village
...
But people from out of town always say it
wrong
...
All that will be left of us by the end,
Lilly says, is a little pile of MetroCards
...
I said it was too bad we don’t have a real witch
...
Plus then we’d have to
put up with Lana all day, and nobody would want that
...
She
probably wouldn’t want to tarnish her reputation by being seen with us
...
After filming was over for the day, we all saw the Blind Guy crossing Bleecker
...
Just my luck, the only guy who’s ever felt me up (not that there’s anything to feel)
was BLIND
...
Like they would
care
...
Like catching murderers
...
Get cat litter 2
...
Stop lying 4
...
Pick up laundry 6
...
Gianini
...
But I decided to let it drop, and I
talked to him about Iceland, because we’re studying Iceland in World Civ
...
They also
have these natural hot springs, and everybody goes swimming in them
...
Everybody knew all the words to the opera and went around
singing it all day
...
It sounds like a fun place
...
But Dad didn’t seem all that impressed by Iceland
...
The country Dad lives in is pretty
small, though
...
I only shared this information with him because he is a politician, and I thought it
might give him some ideas about how to make things better in Genovia, where he lives
...
Genovia’s number one import is tourists
...
That’s probably why people in Genovia don’t have to pay
taxes: The government already has enough money
...
The
only other one is Monaco
...
I suggested to Dad that next summer, instead of spending it with him and
Grandmère at her French chateau, Miragnac, we go to Iceland
...
She’d hate Iceland
...
All Dad said was, “We’ll talk about that some other time,” and hung up
...
Absolute value: the distance that a given number is from zero on a number line
...
Gianini very closely for signs that he might not have had as
good a time on his date with my mom as my mom did
...
During class, while we were working on the quadratic formula (what
happened to FOIL? I was just starting to get the hang of it, and all of a sudden there’s
some NEW thing; nowonder I’m flunking), he asked if anybody had gone out for a part
in the fall musical,My Fair Lady
...
”
I thought I would totally die
...
Gianini was only trying to be nice—I
mean, he is dating my mom, after all—but he was SO far off: First of all because of
course they already held auditions, and even if I could’ve gone out for a part (which I
couldn’t, because I’m flunking Algebra, hello, Mr
...
I can’t sing
...
Even Lana Weinberger, who always got the lead in junior high, didn’t get the lead
...
Lana plays a maid, a spectator at the Ascot Races, and a
Cockney hooker
...
Her job is to flick the lights on and off at the
end of intermission
...
Gianini said I couldn’t evensay anything
...
Maybe that was why later, when Lilly and I
went by my locker at lunch, Lana, who was there waiting for Josh, was all, “Oh,
hello,Amelia,” in her snottiest voice, even though nobody has called me Amelia (except
Grandmère) since kindergarten, when I asked everybody not to
...
I see we
still can’t fit into a bra
...
Moscovitz
say I have issues about confrontation—if Josh Richter hadn’t walked up AT THAT
VERY MOMENT
...
I was ready to go slinking down to the cafeteria and forget the whole thing—God,
that’s all I need, my lack of chest pointed outright in front of Josh Richter!—but Lilly
couldn’t leave well enough alone
...
I mean,
nobody
...
Not that this would be such a heinous thing—I mean, no boys are going to see it
in the girls’ room—but I sort of like keeping my name off walls, for the most part
...
I mean, she’s short and sort of round
and kind of resembles a pug, but she totally doesn’t care how she looks
...
Lilly isn’t afraid of anything
...
”
The whole thing would have escalated into this giant girl fight—Lilly has seen
every single episode ofXena: Warrior Princess, and can kick box like nobody’s business
—if Josh Richter hadn’t slammed his locker door closed and said “I’m outta here” in a
disgusted voice
...
Wait up, Josh!”
Lilly and I just stood there looking at each other like we couldn’t believe it
...
Whoare these people, and why do I have to be incarcerated with them on a daily
basis?
HOMEWORK
Algebra: problems 1–12, pg
...
sentence, rd
...
I got home from school, and my mom was
there (she’s usually at her studio all day during the week)
...
”
She wasn’t humming anymore, and she hadn’t cooked anything, so I knew it was
serious
...
The last time he did that, the vet charged us $1,000 to remove the sock
from his small intestines, and he walked around with a funny look on his face for about
a month
...
Not the vet
...
The reason my dad
kept on calling was because he wanted to tell us that he just found out, because of his
cancer, that he can’t have any more kids
...
Fortunately, the kind of cancer my dad had was pretty
curable
...
Unfortunately, the part they had to cut off was
...
Histesticle
...
Which is what my dad just
found out he is
...
She says we have to be very understanding of
him right now, because men have needs, and one of them is the need to feel
progenitively omnipotent
...
It’s no joke trying to make a whole
country, even one that’s only a mile long, run smoothly
...
He’s always got some new girlfriend slinking
around
...
They always drool all over the pools and the stables and the waterfall and the
twenty-seven bedrooms and the ballroom and the vineyard and the farm and the
airstrip
...
I didn’t know he wanted tomarry one of them and have kids
...
My mom says that’s because at the time she
rejected the bourgeois mores of a society that didn’t even accept women as equals to
men and refused to recognize her rights as an individual
...
Anyway, my mom says Dad is flying here to New York tomorrow to talk to me about
this
...
I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do withme
...
Then she just said, “You’ll have to ask your father
...
My mom only says “Ask your father” when I want to know something
she doesn’t feel like telling me, like why people sometimes kill their own babies and how
come Americans eat so much red meat and read so much less than the people of
Iceland
...
Well, not here in the loft
...
I’m
supposed to go see him tomorrow, after he’s “rested
...
He stopped playing polo, too
...
Anyway, I hate the Plaza
...
The lady who owns the place was there, they said,
and she doesn’t like to see people in cutoffs in the lobby of her fancy hotel
...
He just told me
to put the concierge on the phone, and the next thing you know, everybody was
apologizing to me like crazy
...
It was cool
...
I don’t think the homeless man
wanted the fruit either, since he threw it all in the gutter and just kept the basket to use
as a hat
...
She said it revealed that my dad still has unresolved issues with his
parents, and I said, “Well, duh
...
”
Lilly said she couldn’t comment on the veracity of that statement since she’d never
met my grandmother
...
She says young people give her migraines
...
I really think they should move Lilly up a grade, but she says she
likes being a freshman
...
STARTING TODAY I WILL
1
...
Stop lying all the time about
my feelings 3
...
Keep my comments to myself 5
...
When is she going to go back to the teachers’ lounge?
Maybe never
...
God, he is so CUTE
...
He’s gross
...
Why does he DO that?
You’re so narrow-minded
...
But someone should tell him that in America we don’t
tuck in our sweaters
...
But this isn’t Russia
...
If I have
to hear that requiem for dead King Whoever one more time
...
Lilly, just because I am flunking Algebra does NOT mean I’m stupid
...
What is wrong with you today?
NOTHING!!!!!
slope: slope of a line denotedm is
Find equation of line with slope = 2
Find the degree of slope to Mr
...
kids
...
I mean, I’ve
BEEN to Genovia
...
It is actually on the border of France,
right near Genovia, which is between France and Italy
...
Never with my mother, though
...
My mom and
dad have never lived together
...
My parents broke up before I was ever born, although they have always
been pretty friendly to one another
...
Things would majorly suck, I think,
if they lived together
...
But nobody there ever
mentioned anything about my dad’s being a PRINCE
...
But even then I didn’t connect it
with mydad
...
But the name of the prince of
Genovia was listed in the encyclopedia I used as Artur Christoff Phillipe Gerard
Grimaldi Renaldo
...
Dad hasn’t had any hair since
before I was born (so when he had chemo, you couldn’t even tell, since he was
practically bald anyway)
...
I guess I can see now how Mom might have gone for him, back when she was in
college
...
But a PRINCE? Of a whole COUNTRY? I mean, I knew he was in politics, and of
course I knew he had money—how many kids at my school have summer homes in
France? Martha’s Vineyard, maybe, but notFrance —but a PRINCE?
So what I want to know is, if my dad’s a prince, how come I have to learn Algebra?
I mean, seriously
...
First of all, we almost had a repeat performance of the shorts
incident: The doorman wouldn’t even let me in at first
...
”
This seemed totally unfair
...
I was wearing my
uniform from Albert Einstein
...
Okay,
maybe I was wearing Doc Martens, but come on! I practically WAS that kid Eloise, and
she supposedly ruled the Plaza
...
but my
dad
...
” the concierge came over and asked, “Just whois your father,
young lady?”
As soon as I said his name they let me in
...
But his own daughter, his own daughter nobody tells!
Dad was waiting at a table
...
You shouldsee all the German tourists snapping pictures of themselves eating
chocolate chip scones
...
Oh, we go other places, too
...
I’ve seen it seven times
...
His favorite part is when the dancing forks come out
...
This only happens when I drink something hot and then eat bread
...
It had never happened at the Plaza before, but all of a sudden my dad is like, “Mia,
I want you to know the truth
...
I am the prince of Genovia
...
“Your mother has always felt very strongly that there wasn’t any reason for you to
know, and I agreed with her
...
well,unsatisfactory childhood—”
He’s not kidding
...
Hiccup
...
” Then he
started muttering to himself, which he always does whenever I tell him I’m a vegetarian,
or the subject of Mom comes up
...
In fact, I think growing up in New York City instilled
you with a healthy amount of skepticism about the human race at large—”
Hiccup
...
“—which is something I didn’t gain until college, and I believe is partly
responsible for the fact that I have such a difficult time establishing close interpersonal
relationships with women—”
Hiccup
...
The fact was, we never envisioned that an occasion might arise in
which you might succeed the throne
...
I felt
certain I would meet another woman, marry her, and have more children
...
So, the fact is, you, Mia, are the heir to the throne of
Genovia
...
This was getting embarrassing
...
They were huge, and made my whole body go sproinging up out of my
chair like I was some kind of five-foot-nine frog
...
I meanreally
loud
...
I knew what my dad
was saying was superserious, but I couldn’t help it, I just kept hiccuping! I tried holding
my breath and counting to thirty—I only got to ten before I hiccuped again
...
No go
...
Gianini French-kissing—eventhat didn’t work
...
Five bucks for the
washroom attendant! Geez, my whole allowance is ten bucks a week!
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the ladies’ room at the Plaza, but it’s like totally
the nicest one in Manhattan
...
Anyway, I banged in there, hiccuping like a maniac, and all these women in
these fancy hairdos looked up, annoyed at the interruption
...
I went into one of the stalls, each of which, besides a toilet, has its own private sink
with a huge mirror and a dressing table with a little stool with tassels hanging off it
...
Instead, I concentrated on
what my dad had said:
He’s the prince of Genovia
...
Like how when I fly to France I
just walk onto the plane from the terminal, but when I get there I’m escorted off the
plane before everyone else and get taken away by limo to meet my dad at Miragnac
...
I guess it’s because he’s a prince
...
She calls ahead to insure we will be let in, and no one has ever said no
...
And when I’m at Miragnac, I notice that we never go out to eat anywhere
...
One of the
younger girls, Nicole, is sort of my friend, but then one night she told me this story
about how she was Frenching a boy and I didn’t know what Frenching was
...
I just thought Frenching was
some weird British thing, like toad-in-the-hole, or air raids, or something
...
I wonder if the Brits know that my dad is the prince of Genovia
...
God,
they must have thought I was mentally retarded or something
...
I know when we had to do our fact
sheets, none of the other kids ever had
...
Nobody famous ever came from there
...
A lot of Genovians, like
my grandpa, fought against the Nazis in World War II, but other than that, they aren’t
really known for anything
...
It’s very sunny nearly all the time, with the snow-capped Alps in the background and
the crystal-blue Mediterranean in front of it
...
The main export of Genovia, I remember from my fact sheet, is olive oil, the
really expensive kind my mom says only to use for salad dressing
...
It’s kind of famous because they filmed a movie there
once, a movie about the three Musketeers
...
It’s got all these turrets and flying buttresses and stuff
...
My hiccups are gone
...
me
...
I have to get this down exactly the way it happened
...
But it wasn’t a nightmare
...
I’m not going to tell anybody, not even Lilly
...
NOBODY would understand
...
Nobody ever went to bed one night as one person and then woke up the next
morning to find out that she was somebody completely different
...
This was an
improvement
...
My dad was on his cellular phone when I sat
back down
...
He had on the expression
he wears only when he is talking to her
...
No, she doesn’t
seem upset
...
“Are you upset?”
I said, “No,” because I wasn’t upset—not THEN
...
” He listened for a minute, then he looked at
me again
...
“No
...
They want it by next Tuesday
...
I heard her grumble back
...
My mom likes
to work when the muses move her
...
I swear, if I ever met my mom’s muses, I’d give ’em such swift kicks in the
toga they wouldn’t know what hit them
...
“Better?” he asked
...
“Better,” I said
...
“You are the prince of Genovia
...
” he said, like there was more
...
So I tried, “Grandpère was the prince of Genovia
before you?”
He said, “Yes
...
what?”
“The dowager princess
...
Ew
...
Dad could tell he had me stumped
...
Finally, after I tried just smiling at him innocently for a while, and that didn’t work, I
slumped over and said, “Okay
...
“Mia, don’t you know?”
I had my head on the table
...
“No
...
“I guess not
...
Because I was born out of
wedlock, and my mom doesn’t believe in what she calls the cult of the patriarchy, she
gave me her last name instead of my dad’s
...
“I’m not?” I said, blinking a few times
...
”
Okay
...
Right
...
I am so NOT a princess that when my dad
started telling me that I was one I totally started crying
...
I looked at my face in that big mirror and I
was like,This is the face of a princess?
You should see what I look like
...
I mean, I have really bad hair that isn’t curly or straight; it’s sort of
triangular, so I have to wear it really short or I look like a Yield sign
...
Attractive, huh? And I have a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look
like skis
...
I mean, princesses don’t cry, right?
Then my dad reached out and started patting my hand
...
He kept saying how sorry he was
...
He kept on saying how it wasn’t that bad,
that I’d like living at the palace in Genovia with him, and that I could come back to visit
my little friends as often as I wanted
...
Not only am I a princess, but I have to MOVE???
I stopped crying almost right away
...
Really mad
...
“I am NOT moving to Genovia,” I said in this really loud voice
...
My dad looked kind of shocked
...
I don’t care if itis a
delicacy in France; I’m not eating anything that once walked around and quacked
...
Why should I come
live withyou?”
I realize this was a completelyParty of Five kind of thing to say, and I’m sorry to
say that I followed it up with some prettyParty of Five behavior
...
I think my dad tried to chase me, but I can run pretty fast when I want to
...
Wheeton is always trying to get me to go out for track, but that’s like such a joke,
because I hate running for no reason
...
Anyway, I ran down the street, past the stupid touristy horses and carriages, past
the big fountain with the gold statues in it, past all the traffic outside of F
...
O
...
Nobody was going to attack me because I was this five-foot-nine girl
running in combat boots, with a big backpack with bumper stickers on it that said stuff
like support greenpeace and i brake for animals
...
After a while I got tired of running, and then I tried to figure out where I could go,
since I wasn’t ready to go home yet
...
She is vehemently
opposed to any form of government that is not by the people, exercised either directly or
through elected representatives
...
This is why, today,
real power has passed from reigning monarchs to constitutional assemblies, making
royals such as Queen Elizabeth mere symbols of national unity
...
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
...
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
hate making my mom worry
...
She’s never irresponsible aboutme
...
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
...
She ALWAYS checks
...
I didn’t care much
then about what my dad thought
...
But I just had
to be alone for a little while
...
I guess some girls might like it, but not me
...
I mean, I cando it,
if I have to, but I’d 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 always have, since I was a little kid
...
I love polar bears
...
I
swear! He was on the news once because this animal psychologist was worried he was
under too much stress
...
But then they
bought him some toys, and after that he was all right
...
Sometimes he holds a ball while he does it
...
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
...
Much better than I was, at the moment
...
I wondered where that polar bear had come from
...
After a while it got too crowded at the polar bear enclosure, so then I went into the
penguin house
...
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
...
It totally cracks me up
...
You get used to
the smell after a while
...
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
...
She forgets to feedherself, let alone aCAT
...
At least, not a cat like Louie,
who weighs twenty-five pounds and eats socks
...
Oh, God
...
Even Later on Thursday
Of course, I couldn’t hide out in the penguin house forever
...
I put my journal away and filed out with
everybody else
...
What I didn’t count on was getting it from BOTH my parents at the same time
...
“Where have you been, young lady?” my mom wanted to know
...
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 just needed to be alone, I said
...
My mom did try to
make me eat some Ramen, but I wouldn’t, because it was beef flavored
...
” Then my mom started feeling my head and
stuff, thinking I was sick
...
I guess my dad
recognized my expression from the Plaza, since all of a sudden he was like, “Helen, just
leave her alone
...
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
...
His voice was rumbly, like thunder
...
My dad actually has a lot in common with Captain Picard
...
Except that Captain Picard always makes everything okay by the end of the
episode, and I sincerely doubt everything will be okay for me
...
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
...
It wasFriday
...
Fridays always
mean two days—two glorious, relaxing days—of NO Algebra are coming my way
...
And I was all set to thank her for thinking of me, and then I heard this rustle
...
Asuit
...
And then I remembered
...
that
...
Everything good about my day just went right out the window after
As soon as he saw me, my dad was all, “Ah, Mia
...
He only says “Ah, Mia”when he’s about to give me a big
lecture
...
My dad always folds papers
carefully, making the edges all neat
...
She usually crumples the
pages up and leaves them, out of order, on the futon couch or next to the toilet
...
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 done all that to cheer me up, I know, and she’d probably gotten up really early to do
it, too
...
Because I bet they don’t use green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses for
breakfast at the palace in Genovia
...
This is how his worst lectures always start
...
“What’s wrong with
your hair?”
I put my hand up to my head
...
“Nothing is wrong with her hair, Phillipe,” my mom said
...
“Come and sit down, Mia, and have some breakfast
...
”
I appreciated this gesture on my mom’s part
...
But I was not going to sit
down and talk about my future in Genovia
...
So I was all, “Uh, I’d love
to, really, but I gotta go
...
”
Boy, my dad can really sound like a starship captain in the Federation when he
wants to
...
My mom shoveled some French toast onto my plate
...
It tasted like cardboard
...
She was still trying to ward off my dad’s lecture
...
But really, it isn’t as bad as you’re making it
out to be
...
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
...
Lana Weinberger would probablylove to
be a princess
...
“Just think of all the lovely things you could have if you went to live in Genovia
...
“Like a car! You know how impractical it is to have a car here in the city
...
Diesel emissions are one of the largest contributors to the destruction
of the ozone layer
...
A nice gray one with spots on its back—”
That hurt
...
I completely couldn’t help it
...
“What are youdoing? Do youwant 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
...
can
...
But by then my mom was crying,
too
...
“I just want what’s best for you!”
“As do I,” my dad said, looking annoyed
...
“Well, what’s best for me is to stay right here and finish high school,” I told him
...
”
said
...
“You arenot joining Greenpeace,” he
“I am, too,” I said
...
”
“You most certainly are not
...
Now he looked
mad
...
Vassar, I think
...
”
That made me cry even more
...
We aren’t accomplishing anything here
...
She’s
already late—”
I started looking around for my backpack and coat real fast
...
“I
gotta renew my MetroCard
...
It’s halfway between a
snort and a sigh
...
”
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
...
”
I looked at my mom
...
Lars is my dad’s driver
...
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
...
Duh
...
How would I ever explain it to Lilly?Oh, don’t mind him, Lilly
...
Yeah, right
...
She even has a
bodyguard who follows her around from class to class and talks on a walkie-talkie to the
chauffeur
...
But Dad was totally rigid on the driver thing
...
Yesterday, when I was Mia
Thermopolis, it was perfectly okay for me to ride the subway
...
Well, whatever
...
I mean, there are way worse
things I have to worry about
...
As I was leaving—my dad made Lars come up to the loft to walk me down to the
car; it was totally embarrassing—I overheard my dad say to my mom, “All right, Helen
...
ab=a +b
solve forb
ab-b =a
b(a- 1) =a
More Friday, Algebra
Lilly could tell right away something was up
...
”
But I couldn’t tell her about the princess thing
...
Lilly believed me about Lars, but she was still all over me with the crying thing
...
Why were
you crying? Did something happen? What happened? Did you get another F in
something?”
I just shrugged and tried to look out the passenger window at the uninspiring view
of the East Village crackhouses, which we had to drive by to get to the FDR
...
“PMS
...
You had your period last week
...
” Sometimes
I wish Lilly’s memory weren’t so good
...
Did Louie eat another sock?”
First of all, it was like totally embarrassing to discuss my menstrual cycle in front
of my dad’s bodyguard
...
He was concentrating really
hard on driving, though, and I don’t know if he could hear us from the front seat, but it
was embarrassing, just the same
...
“Just my dad
...
”
“Oh,” Lilly said in her normal voice
...
”
Lilly then went on to describe something she called the Jungian tree of selfactualization
...
I guess that’s part of my problem
...
Like, underneath the roots of it, practically
...
I mean, I
thought about it all through Homeroom, and I finally realized something:
They can’tmake me be princess
...
I mean, this is America, for crying out loud
...
At least that’s what Mrs
...
S
...
So, if I can be whatever I want to be, I cannot be a
princess
...
Right?
So when I get home tonight, I’ll just tell my dad thanks, but no thanks
...
Geez
...
Gianini just called on me, and I totally had no idea what he was talking
about, because of course I was writing in this book instead of paying attention
...
Lana is laughing her head off, of course
...
What does he keep picking onme for, anyway? He should know by now that I don’t
know the quadratic formula from a hole in the ground
...
He wants to make it look as if he’s treating me the same as
everybody else in the class
...
What do I need to know Algebra for, anyway? They don’t use Algebra in
Greenpeace
...
So however things turn out,
I’m covered
...
solvex =a +aby fory
x-a =aby
Really Late on Friday,
Lilly Moscovitz’s Bedroom
Okay, so I blew off Mr
...
Iknow I shouldn’t have
...
I know he has these help sessions just
for people like me, who are flunking
...
But if I won’t ever need Algebra in any
foreseeable future career, why do I need to go?
I asked Lilly if it would be okay if I spent the night at her house tonight and she
said only if I promised to stop acting like such a head case
...
But when I called my mom from the pay phone in the lobby after school to ask her
if it was okay if I stayed overnight at the Moscovitzes, she was all, “Um, actually, Mia,
your father was really hoping that when you got home tonight we could have another
talk
...
I told my mom that although there was nothing I wanted to do more than have
another talk, I was very concerned about Lilly, whose stalker was recently released from
Bellevue again
...
According to the Drs
...
His fixation is feet—in particular, Lilly’s feet
...
So what Lilly does is, she takes off her shoes, all right, but then she throws a
blanket over her legs and kicks her feet around under it and goes, “Look, Norman, you
freak! I took my shoes off! Thanks for the CDs, sucker!”
This angered Norman so much that he started wandering around the Village
looking for Lilly
...
Anyway, one day a few weeks ago Norman the foot fetishist found us in the park
and started chasing us around, waving twenty dollar bills and trying to get us to take off
our shoes
...
We told the police that this weird guy was trying to assault us, and
you should have seen it: About twenty undercover guys (even a guy I thought was an
old homeless man asleep on a bench) jumped on Norman and dragged him, screaming,
off to the mental ward!
I always have such a good time with Lilly
...
Lilly’s devoting tomorrow’s show to her feet
...
She hopes that this will drive
Norman over the edge and he’ll do something weirder than ever, like get a gun and
shoot at us
...
Norman has kind of thick glasses, and I bet he couldn’t
actually hit anything, even with a machine gun, which even a lunatic like Norman is
allowed to buy in this country thanks to our totally unrestrictive gun laws, which
Michael Moscovitz says in his webzine will ultimately result in the demise of democracy
as we know it
...
She was all, “Mia, I appreciate the
fact that you want to help your friend through this difficult period with her stalker, but I
really think you have more pressing responsibilities here at home
...
And she was like, “Responsibility toward your father and me
...
Responsibilities?Responsibilities? She’s tellingme
about responsibilities? When is the last time it ever occurred toher to drop off the
laundry, let alone pick it up again? When is the last timeshe remembered to buy Q-Tips
or toilet paper or milk?
And did she ever happen to think to mention, in all of my fourteen years, that I
might possibly end up being the princess of Genovia someday???
Shethinks she needs to tellme about my responsibilities?
HA!!!!!!
I nearly hung up on her
...
Since I had
promised not to act like a head case, and hanging up on my mother would definitely fall
into the head case category, I said in this really patient voice, “Don’t worry, Mom, I
won’t forget to stop at Genovese on my way home tomorrow and pick up new vacuum
cleaner bags
...
HOMEWORK
Algebra: problems 1–12, pg
...
sentence, rd
...
In fact, my mom and I have better stuff
...
99 per month
...
On Fifth Avenue, where the Moscovitzes live, there’snobody
good to look at: Just other rich psychoanalysts and their children
...
But it’s like every time I spend the night here, even if all Lilly and I do is hang out
in the kitchen eating macaroons left over from Rosh Hashanah, I have such a great
time
...
Or maybe it’s because I never find moldy old containers of anything in the
Moscovitzes’ refrigerator
...
Even sour cream that still has the protective plastic around the lid
...
And the Drs
...
Con Ed has never
once shut downtheir power in the middle of aStar Trek movie marathon
...
Not that I don’t love my mom or anything
...
I just wish she could be
more of a mom and less of an artist
...
Dr
...
Not that I don’t love my dad
...
I just don’t understand how he could let
something like this happen
...
How could he have let himself
become a prince?
I just don’t understand it
...
I can just relax and enjoy some real homemade
Poppin Fresh Cinnamon Buns and watch Pavlov, Michael’s sheltie, try to herd Maya
back into the kitchen every time she tries to comes out
...
The Drs
...
We were
able to definitively determine that Pierce Brosnan was the skinniest James Bond, Sean
Connery the hairiest, and Roger Moore the most tan
...
I like chest hair
...
It was sort of ironic that while I was trying to decide this Lilly’s brother came into
the room
...
He looked kind of annoyed
...
My dad was all mad because he’d been trying to get through for hours,
only Michael was on the Internet answering fan mail for his webzine,Crackhead, so my
dad kept getting a busy signal
...
I’ll tell him you and
Lilly already went to bed,” which is a lie my mother would never believe, but it must
have gone over pretty well with my dad, since Michael came back and reported that my
dad had apologized for calling so late (it was only eleven) and that he’d speak to me in
the morning
...
I can’t wait
...
Moscovitzes’ room
...
Then Michael sat down to watch the movies with
us, and in the interest of science, Lilly asked him which Bond girls were most attractive
to him, the blonds who always needed James Bond to rescue them or the brunettes who
were always pulling guns on him, and Michael said he couldn’t resist a girl with a
weapon, which got us started on his two favorite TV shows of all time,Xena :Warrior
Princess andBuffy the Vampire Slayer
...
Then Michael started saying all this totally unfair stuff about Josh Richter, like
how in the face of nuclear armageddon he’d probably show cowardice, but Lilly said
fear of new things is not an accurate measure of one’s potential for growth, with which
I agreed
...
Then Michael asked me if I would put out for Josh Richter, and I had to think
about it for a minute
...
Moscovitz’s Over Forty and Still Single group, which meets every other
Tuesday
...
We’d been dating for at least a year
...
He pledged his undying love to me
...
He
took me to seeBeauty and the Beast on Broadway and didn’t make fun of it
...
He said he
didn’t know anyone with an ounce of testosterone who could watchBeauty and the
Beast on Broadway without projectile vomiting
...
Then Lilly asked Michael who he would choose if he had to, me or Lana
Weinberger, and he said, “Mia, of course,” but I’m sure he was just saying that because
I was right there in the room and he didn’t want to dis me to my face
...
But she kept on doing it, wanting to know who Michael would choose, me or
Madonna, and me or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (he chose me over Madonna, but Buffy
won, hands down, over me)
...
I
pretended to be seriously thinking about it, when to my total relief the Drs
...
So then later after Lilly and I had cleaned up all the popcorn and gone back to her
room, she asked me again who I would choose, Josh Richter or her brother, and I had
to say Josh Richter, because Josh Richter is the hottest boy in our whole school, maybe
the whole world, and I am completely and totally in love with him, and not just because
of the way his blond hair sometimes falls into his eyes when he’s bent over, looking for
stuff in his locker, but because I know that behind that jock facade he maintains he is a
deeply sensitive and caring person
...
But I couldn’t help thinking if itreally were the end of the world, it might be better
to be with Michael, even if he isn’t so hot, because at least he makes me laugh
...
Plus, of course, Michael looks really good without a shirt
...
She’d think it
was weird
...
Later on Saturday
The whole way home from Lilly’s I worried about what my mom and dad were
going to say when I got home
...
I mean, really never
...
But that was just that one time! And I totally learned a lesson from it, without my
mom having to ground me or anything
...
Who would go to the cash machine to get money for take-out if I
were grounded?
But my dad’s another story
...
My
mom says that’s because Grandmère used to punish him when he was a little boy by
locking him into this one really scary room in their house
...
Geez, no wonder my dad does every single thing Grandmère says
...
Like the time I wouldn’t
go to church with Grandmère because I refused to pray to a god who would allow rain
forests to be destroyed in order to make grazing room for cows who would later become
Quarter Pounders for the ignorant masses who worship that symbol of all that is evil,
Ronald McDonald
...
He crushed my modem
with a magnum of Chateauneuf du Pape
...
I tried to hang out at the Moscovitzes’ as long as possible: I loaded the breakfast
dishes in the dishwasher for Maya, since she was busy writing a letter to her
congressman asking him to please do something about her son, Manuel, who was
wrongfully imprisoned ten years ago for supporting a revolution in their country
...
I even
unclogged the jets in the Drs
...
Then Lilly had to go and announce that it was time to shoot the one-hour special
episode of her show, the one dedicated to her feet
...
Moscovitz
had not left, like we thought they had, for their rolfing sessions
...
Here’s the thing:
I am generally a very good daughter
...
I don’t smoke
...
I
haven’t given birth at any proms
...
Except for one lousy F in a class that will be of no use to me
whatsoever in my future life, I’m doing pretty well
...
I decided on my way home that if my dad tried to punish me I was going to call
Judge Judy
...
She’d let him have it, boy, let me tell you
...
Of course, when I got home, it turned out I didn’t have to call Judge Judy at all
...
She was sitting there waiting for me to come home, reading old copies of the
subscription she got me toSeventeen magazine before she realized I was too flat-chested
to ever be asked out on a date, so all the information provided in that particular
periodical was worthless to me
...
To my surprise, he wasn’t wearing a suit
...
When I walked in, he folded the paper all carefully, put it down, and gave me this
long, intent look, like Captain Picard right before he starts going on to Ryker about the
Prime Directive
...
”
I immediately started in about how it wasn’t like I hadn’t told them where I was,
and how I just needed a little time away to think about things, and how I’d been really
careful and hadn’t taken the subway or anything, and my dad just went, “I know
...
“I know
...
My dad
...
And then she did
the craziest thing
...
”
Hello?These are myparents? Did the body snatchers come while I was gone and
replace my parents with pod people? Because that was the only way I could think of that
my parents would be so reasonable
...
”
Then my dad asked me if I knew what a compromise was, and I said yes, of course,
I’m not in like the third grade anymore, so he pulled out this piece of paper, and on it
we all drafted what my mom calls the Thermopolis-Renaldo Compromise
...
I asked if that meant no more summers at Miragnac, and he said yes
...
Christmas and summer, free of Grandmère? That would be like going to the
dentist, only instead of having cavities filled I’d just get to readTeen People and suck up
a lot of laughing gas! I was so happy, I hugged him right there
...
All of that sounded pretty good to me, except the last part
...
Attending the funerals of world leaders,
opening balls, that sort of thing
...
Flashbulbs going off in your face, that kind of thing
...
”
Yeah, butfunerals?Balls? I don’t even know how to put on lip liner, let alone
curtsy
...
“Grandmère
will take care of that
...
What canshe do? She’s in France!
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Saturday Night
I can’t even believe what a loser I am
...
Even the prince of
Genovia can’t get tickets to a Broadway show at a minute’s notice on a Saturday night
...
Gianini
...
Mom’s lips only get
small when she’s trying to keep herself from saying something, and I think what she
wanted to say to my dad was“Get out! Go back to your hotel! You’re paying six hundred
dollars a night for that suite! Can’t you go stay in it?”
My dad drives my mom completely insane because he’s always going around,
digging her bank statements out from the big salad bowl where she throws all our mail,
and trying to tell her how much she would save in interest if she would just transfer
funds out of her checking account and into a Roth IRA
...
Only when Mom came out in her datewear,
which included this totally hot black minidress from Victoria’s Secret (my mom hates
shopping, so she buys all her clothes from catalogs while she’s soaking in the tub after a
long day of painting), my dad started to choke on this ice cube
...
She looked totally fine; in fact, she looked much better than she usually did, which
I guess was the problem
...
I can onlywish that someday I’ll be as pretty as my
mom
...
She is
way hot, as far as moms go
...
Gianini to
come up and meet her ex, the prince of Genovia
...
I mean, he looked like a red-faced bald man
in a cashmere sweater coughing up a lung
...
Anyway, it was good for me that she didn’t buzz Mr
...
So then, after they were gone, I tried to show my dad how much better suited I am
for life in Manhattan than in Genovia by ordering some really excellent food
...
He didn’t even notice when Fat Louie sat down
next to him
...
And my dad claims to beallergic
to cats
...
All he wanted
to do was watch sports
...
Sports
...
Forget the Dirty Harry movie marathon
...
He just turned on the
sports channel and stared at it, and when I happened to mention that Mom and I
usually watch whatever is on HBO on Saturday nights, he just turned up the volume!!!
What a baby
...
He
made Lars frisk the deliveryman before he would let me buzz him up! Can you believe
it? I had to give Antonio a whole extra dollar to make up for the indignity of it all
...
I mean, God forbid he should share some quality time
with his only daughter, the heir to his throne
...
Not that I’m ever NOT home on a
Saturday night, except when I’m with Lilly
...
It’s not MY fault my hair sticks out the way it does, any more than it’s
Lilly’s fault her face looks sort of squished
...
The Moscovitzes are trying to have a second
line installed so that people who call them can actually get through once in a while, but
the phone company says it doesn’t have any more 212 numbers to give out
...
Besides, Michael will be leaving for college next
fall, and then their phone problems will be solved
...
I mean, I haven’t told her anything about the
princess thing, and I’m not going to,ever, but sometimes, even without telling her what’s
bothering me, talking to Lilly makes me feel better
...
I mean, most of the
other girls in our class date
...
She’s been quite
popular since she developed breasts over the summer
...
Taylor to photocopy before he’ll
let Shameeka go out of the house with him
...
Somebodyasked her out
...
It was pretty boring, watching my dad snore, even though it was fairly comical the
way Fat Louie kept glancing at him, all annoyed, every time he inhaled
...
I decided to try instant
messaging Michael, telling him I really needed to talk to Lilly and would he please go
off-line so I could call her
...
PLEASE GO OFF-LINE SO I CAN
CALL HER
...
JUST GO OFF-LINE, PLEASE
...
IT ISN’T
FAIR
...
WHAT
ARE YOU DOING HOME, ANYWAY? WHAT’S THE MATTER? DREAMBOY
DIDN’T CALL?
FTLOUIE:WHO’S DREAMBOY?
CRACKING:YOU KNOW, YOUR POSTNUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON LIFEMATE OF CHOICE, JOSH RICHTER
...
FTLOUIE:WOULD YOU PLEASE GO OFF-LINE SO I CAN CALL LILLY????
CRACKING:WHAT’S THE MATTER, THERMOPOLIS? DID I STRIKE A
NERVE?
I logged off
...
But then about five minutes later the phone rang, and it was Lilly
...
Lilly’s very upset about how her parents are violating her First Amendment right to
free speech by not letting her make the episode of her show dedicated to her feet
...
Without her parents’
financial support, which they have currently revoked,Lilly Tells It Like It Is cannot go
on
...
Public access
is only accessible to people with cash
...
Now that I think about it, it’s probably just better that way
...
Sunday, October 5
I can’t believe Mr
...
I can’t believe he told my mother I skipped his
stupid review session on Friday!!!!
Hello?Do I have no rights here? Can’t I skip a review session and not get finked on
by my mother’s boyfriend?
I mean, it’s not like my life isn’t bad enough: I’m already deformed,and I have to
be a princess
...
Gianini
...
Hello? May I remind everyone that I’m supposed to have Saturday and Sunday
OFF from school?
AND Mr
...
I mean, I guess that was kind of nice of him and all, to give me a heads-up,
but you’re not supposed to study for a pop quiz
...
Then again, since I’ve apparently retained nothing mathematical since about the
second grade, I guess I can’t really blame my dad for being so mad
...
So then I pointed out that
summer school was fine by me, since I’d already agreed to spend summers in Genovia
...
I met some kids who went to school in Genovia and they didn’t even
know what a number line was
...
As if metric wasn’t so totally over!
But just in case, I’m not taking any chances
...
I’ll wear them tomorrow and cross my legs and take a peek if I get stuck
...
m
...
What will happen if
someone sees I have the quadratic formula written on my shoe? Will I be expelled? I
don’t want to be expelled! I mean, even though everybody at Albert Einstein High
School thinks I’m a freak, I’m sort of getting used to it
...
I’ll have to wear the scarlet mark of being a cheater for the
rest of my high school career!
And what about college? I might not get into college if it goes down on my
permanent record that I’m a cheater
...
But what about Greenpeace? I’m sure Greenpeace
doesn’t want cheaters
...
m
...
m
...
I have no choice but to
wear my high-tops!
I’m going to get caught for sure, I just know it
...
m
...
I am so stupid
...
She doesn’t
like being driven to school
...
I told her I didn’t know
how long my dad was going to be in town, but that I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be
allowed to ride the subway anymore, anywhere
...
I noticed that, in the driver’s seat, Lars was sort of laughing to
himself
...
How embarrassing
...
Of course I’m listless! I’ve been up since 3 a
...
, trying to wash my shoes!
Went into the girls’ room to try to wash them again
...
She saw me washing my shoes, and she just rolled her eyes and
started brushing her long, Marcia Brady hair and staring at herself in the mirror
...
The quadratic formula is smeared, but still legible, on my sneaker
...
Monday, October 6, G & T
Okay
...
I looked
...
After he’d collected the test, Mr
...
I CAN’T EVEN CHEAT RIGHT!!!
I have got to be the most pathetic human being on the planet
...
Gianini
...
Gianini goes, “Mia, will I have the pleasure of your
company this afternoon at the review session?”
I said yes, but I didn’t say it loud enough for anyone to hear but him
...
I’m flunking
Algebra, my mom’s dating my teacher, and I’m the princess of Genovia
...
Tuesday, October 7
Ode to Algebra
Thrust into this dingy classroom we die like lampless moths locked into the
desolation of fluorescent lights and metal desks
...
What
use is the quadratic formula in our daily lives? Can we use it to unlock the secrets in the
hearts of those we love? Five minutes until the bell rings
...
A, pg
...
She’shere
...
But she’s in this country
...
She’s only like
fifty-seven blocks away, as a matter of fact
...
Thank
God
...
It would suck so
bad if she were staying here
...
She wears these really fancy
negligees to bed, with big lace sections that everything shows through
...
Stuff
you wouldn’t want to see
...
It looks pretty weird, seeing this little old lady in a lace nightie with big black
lines around her eyes first thing in the morning
...
Scarier than Freddy Kruger and Jason put together
...
He probably rolled over one
morning and got a real good look at his wife
...
I mean it; he really ought to
know
...
Last time I saw Grandmère, she was having this dinner party, and she served
everybody foie gras except this one woman
...
And when I tried to give the lady my foie gras,
because I thought maybe they had run out—and anyway, I don’t eat anything that once
was alive—my grandmother was all, “Amelia!” She said it so loud, she scared me
...
Her horrible miniature poodle pried it
up off the parquet before I could even move
...
Hello?Grandmère, may I point out that your own son had a child out of wedlock,
namely me, Mia,your granddaughter?
But when I said that, Grandmère just yelled for her maid to bring her another
drink
...
But if
you’re just a regular person, no foie gras for you
...
I
don’t think she’s ever been below Fifty-seventh Street
...
People of the same sex kiss and hold hands in our
neighborhood all the time
...
What’s she going to do during the Gay Pride Parade, when everybody is
kissing and holding hands and shouting “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Over It?”
Grandmère won’t get over it
...
She doesn’t even like
pierced ears, let alone pierced anything else
...
Also, Grandmère hates cats
...
What’s she going to say when she sees Fat
Louie? He sleeps in bed with me every night
...
He weighs twenty-five pounds and seven ounces, and that’s before he’s had
his can of Fancy Feast in the morning
...
There’s no
way I’m going to be able to keep this a secret from everyone with HER around
...
She’s giving me princess lessons
...
More later
...
I am not kidding
...
Okay, so if there’s a God, how could this have happened?
I mean it
...
This is justtoo
much! Ican-not go to princess lessons every day after school
...
I am
seriously considering running away from home
...
Last night, after I left Grandmère’s room at the
Plaza, I went straight down to his
...
No way
...
And do you know what he said? He says I signed the compromise, so I am
obligated to attend princess lessons as part of my duties as his heir
...
But my dad wouldn’t even talk to me about it
...
And then while I was standing there, going on about how
unfair this all was, in walks this reporter from ABC
...
I’m going to have to take a good look at that compromise tonight, because I don’t
recall it saying anything about princess lessons
...
Then he sees Lars, who is
like six foot seven and must weigh three hundred pounds
...
I was too
embarrassed to ask him about it, in case it dredged up painful memories for him of
being teased as a child in Amsterdam, or wherever he is from
...
But no, it’s a gun, and the doorman got all upset about it and called the concierge
over
...
So then the concierge himself escorted me upstairs to the penthouse, which is
where Grandmère is staying
...
I
thought the ladies’ room at the Plaza was fancy? The ladies’ room is nothing compared
to this penthouse
...
Pink walls, pink carpet, pink curtains, pink
furniture
...
And just when I thought I was going to drown in pinkness, out came Grandmère,
dressed completely in purple, from her silk turban all the way down to her mules with
the rhinestone clips on the toes
...
Grandmère always wears purple
...
Traditionally, purple has always stood for the aristocracy, since for hundreds of years
peasants weren’t allowed to dye their clothes with indigo, and therefore couldn’t make
violet
...
So
while Grandmère is definitely delusional, it’s not because she THINKS she’s an
aristocrat; she really IS one
...
“Why are you wearing tennis shoes with a skirt? Are those tights supposed to be
clean? Why can’t you stand up straight? What’s wrong with your hair? Have you been
biting your nails again, Amelia? I thought we agreed you were going to give up that
nasty habit
...
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she goes, in her creaky old cigaretty voice,
“Haven’t you a kiss for yourgrandmère, then?”
So I go up to her and bend down (my grandmother is like a foot shorter than me)
and kiss her on the cheek (which is very soft because she rubs Vaseline on her face
every night before she goes to bed), and then when I start to pull away she grabs me and
goes, “Pfui!Have you forgotteneverything I taught you?” and makes me kiss her on the
other cheek, too, because in Europe (and SoHo), that’s how you say hello to people
...
Rommel is Grandmère’s fifteen-year-old
miniature poodle
...
He
shakes all the time and has to wear a fleece jacket
...
Rommel won’t let anyone touch him except for Grandmère, and
even then he rolls his eyes around as if he were being tortured while she’s petting him
...
“Now,” Grandmère said when she felt we’d been affectionate enough, “let’s see if I
have this right: Your father tells you that you are the princess of Genovia and you burst
into tears
...
I had to sit down on one of the pink foofy chairs
before I fell down
...
“I don’t want to be a princess
...
”
Grandmère said, “Don’t converse in English with me
...
Speak French
when you speak to me
...
Do not drape your legs over the arm
...
You are Amelia
...
”
I said, “You forgot Thermopolis,” and Grandmère gave me the evil eye
...
“No,” she said
...
”
Then Grandmère sat down in the foofy chair next to mine and said, “Are you
telling me you have no wish to assume your rightful place upon the throne?”
Boy, was I tired
...
I could tell she wanted
to kill me but probably couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting blood on the pink
carpet
...
“And you will take my son’s place on the throne when he dies
...
There is
no other way
...
So I kind of went, “Yeah, whatever, Grandmère
...
Is
this princess thing going to take long?”
Grandmère just looked at me
...
I am not
afraid to sacrifice my time—or even myself—for the good of my country
...
This was getting way patriotic
...
“Okay
...
You will come here directly after school
...
I can’t come here directly after school
...
I
have to go to a review session every day after school
...
No dawdling
...
That is all
...
Homework? There’s going to behomework? Nobody said
anything about homework!
“And close your mouth,” she barked
...
”
I closed my mouth
...
Not tights
...
You are too old for
tights and kneesocks
...
You will
style your hair, apply lipstick, and paint your fingernails—what’s left of them, anyway
...
She didn’t even have to push up with her hands on the arms of her
chair, either
...
“Now I must dress for dinner with the
shah
...
”
I just sat there
...
Geez! Homework!!! Nobody said there was going to be homework
...
Panty hose? To school? I mean, the only girls who
wear panty hose to school are girls like Lana Weinberger, and seniors, and people like
that
...
Show-offs
...
And, I might add, none of my friends wear lipstick or nail polish or do their hair
...
But what choice did I have? Grandmère totally scared me, with her tattooed eyelids
and all
...
So what I did was, I borrowed a pair of my mom’s panty hose
...
Gianini, I’ve noticed
...
I didn’t have any fingernails
to paint—according to Lilly, I am orally fixated; if it fits in my mouth, I’ll put it there—
but I did borrow one of my mom’s lipsticks, too
...
It must have worked, since when Lilly got into the car this morning,
she said, “Wow
...
So then, after my review session with Mr
...
When I checked myself out in the mirror, I thought I
didn’t look so bad
...
I thought I was pretty slick, waiting to change until after school
...
Who wants to hang
around school on a Friday?
I had forgotten, of course, about the Computer Club
...
They
don’t have any friends, except each other, and they never go on dates—only unlike me, I
think this is by choice: No one at Albert Einstein is smart enough for them—except,
again, for each other
...
He’s the Computer Club treasurer
...
“Christ, Thermopolis,” he said, as I scrambled around, trying to pick up all the
stuff I’d dropped—like my high-tops and socks and stuff—when I bumped into him
...
“You know I have to meet with Mr
...
” Michael held up the lipstick that had exploded out of my backpack
...
“Nothing
...
”
“Don’t tell Lilly what?” I stood up, and he noticed the panty hose
...
Where areyou going?”
“Nowhere
...
Plus a bunch of his computer nerd friends were standing there, staring
at me like I was some new kind of pixel or something
...
“Nobody goesnowhere looking like that
...
“Thermopolis, are you going out on
adate?”
“What?No, I’m not going on a date!” I was completely shocked at the idea
...
“And do you usually wear lipstick and
panty hose to meet your grandmother?”
I heard some discreet coughing, and looked down the hall
...
I guess I could have stood there and explained that my grandmother had
threatened me with bodily harm (well, practically) if I didn’t wear make up and nylons
to meet her
...
So I said, “Look, don’t tell Lilly,
okay?”
Then I ran away
...
There was no way Michael wasn’t going to tell his sister
about seeing me coming out of the girls’ room after school in lipstick and panty hose
...
And Grandmère’s was HORRIBLE
...
At least that’s what I thought she said, and I couldn’t figure out why she
thought I looked like a chicken
...
Andshe said that the panty hose I had on were the wrong color
...
This has to constitute torture
...
You should be
admiringreal women
...
I mean, Madonna might have had a little plastic surgery, but she’s
stillreal
...
I pointed
out to her that Princess Diana is on my list, and you know what she said? She says she
thinks Princess Diana was a “twink”! That’s what she called her
...
”
Only she pronounced it “tweenk
...
She told me to be at
the Plaza tomorrow no later than ten o’clock—A
...
10A
...
!
“Grandmère,” I said
...
”
“I know it
...
“Saturdays are when I help my friend Lilly film her TV
show—”
But Grandmère asked me which was more important, Lilly’s TV show or the wellbeing of the people of Genovia, who, in case you didn’t know, number in the 50,000
range
...
Still, it’s going to be tough explaining to Lilly why I won’t be there to hold the
camera when she confronts Mr
...
Ho, owners of Ho’s Deli, across the street
from Albert Einstein, about their unfair pricing policies
...
and Mrs
...
Lilly discovered this yesterday after play rehearsal when she went to buy ginkgo biloba
puffs and Ling Su, in front of her in line, bought the same thing
...
Ho charged
her (Lilly)five whole cents more than Ling Su for the same product
...
Ho pretended like she couldn’t speak
English, even though she must speak some English, or why else would her mini-TV
behind the counter always be tuned to Judge Judy?
Lilly has decided to secretly videotape the Hos to gather evidence of their blatantly
preferential treatment of Asian Americans
...
The thing is, I think Lilly’s making a really big deal about five cents
...
I don’t know
...
They’re very nice to the little cat
they’ve raised from a kitten to chase rats away from the chicken wings in the salad bar
...
But Iam sorry Grandmère tore up my list of the ten women I admire most
...
When I got home, I printed it out again, just because it made me so
mad, her tearing it up like that
...
And after carefully reviewing my copy of the Renaldo-Thermopolis Compromise, I
seenothing about princess lessons
...
I
have been leaving messages for Dad all night, but he doesn’t answer
...
Maya says the Moscovitzes went to Great Shanghai for
dinner as a family, in order to grow to understand one another better as human beings
...
I don’t want her to
think I’m in any way against her groundbreaking investigation into Ho’s Deli
...
I hate my life
...
Madonna Ciccone revolutionized the fashion world with her
iconoclastic sense of style, sometimes offending people who are not very open-minded—
for instance, her rhinestone cross earrings, which made many Christian groups ban her
CDs—or who have no sense of humor—like Pepsi, which didn’t like it when she danced
in front of some burning crosses
...
Princess Diana
...
She, too, revolutionized the fashion
world by refusing to wear the ugly old hats that her mother-in-law told her to wear, and
instead wore Halston and Bill Blass
...
The night Princess Diana died I unplugged the TV and said I would
never watch it again, since media was what killed her
...
Hillary Rodham Clinton
...
Also, even though everybody
was talking bad about her all the time for not leaving her husband, who was going
around having sex with people behind her back, she pretended like nothing was going
on and went on running the country, just like she’d always done, which is how a
president should behave
...
She won all those gold medals in skiing, all
because she just practiced like crazy and never gave up, even when she was crashing
into fences and things
...
Leola Mae
Harmon
...
Leola was an air force nurse
who was in a car accident and the lower part of her face got all mangled, but then
Armand Assante, who plays a plastic surgeon, said he could fix her
...
Armand Assante said he would make her a new pair of lips, only the other air force
doctors didn’t like the fact that he wanted to make them out of skin from Leola’s vagina
...
And the whole thing turned out to have
beenbased on a true story
...
Joan of Arc—or Jeanne d’Arc as they say in
France—lived in like the twelfth century and one day when she was my age she heard
this angel’s voice tell her to take up arms and go help the French army fight against the
British (the French were always fighting the British, all the way up until the Nazis
attacked, and then they were like, “Zut alors!Can you help us?” and the British had to
go in and try to save their lazy butts, for which nobody French has ever been properly
grateful, as exemplified by their sloppy highway maintenance; see death of Princess
Diana, above)
...
But then, like typical politicians, the French government decided Joan was
too powerful, so they accused her of being a witch and burned her to death at the stake
...
I think angels really DID talk to her
...
All Brandon Hertzenbaum’s voices told him to do was go into the boys’ room
and carve “Satan” in the door to the bathroom stall with a protractor
...
Christy
...
She is the fictional heroine of my favorite book
of all time, which is calledChristy,by Catherine Marshall
...
Only I can’t tell anyone, especially Lilly,
that this is my favorite book, because it’s kind of sappy and religious, and plus it doesn’t
have any spaceships or serial killers in it
...
The lady cop told the truck driver it was a no-honking zone, and then when he
argued about it, she wrote him another ticket for arguing with an officer of the law
...
Lilly Moscovitz isn’t really a woman, yet, but she’s someone I admire
very much
...
Well, at least, not much
...
Laura, who was signing books there, if she knows so much
how come she’s divorced, then showing it on her (Lilly’s) TV show, including the part
where we got thrown out and banned from the Union Square Barnes & Noble forever
after
...
Helen Thermopolis
...
Her paintingWoman Waiting for Price Check at the Grand Unionwon this
big national award and sold for $140,000, only part of which my mom got to keep, since
15 percent of it went to her gallery and half of what was left went to taxes, which sucks,
if you ask me
...
I also respect her because she is deeply principled: She says she would never
think of inflicting her beliefs on others and would thank others to pay her the same
courtesy
...
Saturday, October 11, 9:30 a
...
So I was right: Lillydoes think the reason I’m not participating in the taping today
is because I’m against her boycott of the Hos
...
But
guess what? She doesn’t believe me
...
Which doesn’t even
make sense, since obviously I am saying no toher
...
I can’t say no to my grandmother, since she’s like sixty-five
years old, and she’s going to die soon, if there’s any justice at all in the world
...
You don’t say no to my
grandmother
...
” My
mom’s parents areafraid to come to New York City because they say there are too many
“furinners”—by which they mean foreigners—here, and anything that isn’t 100 percent
American scares them, which is one of the reasons my mom left home when she was
eighteen and has only been back twice, and that was with me
...
It’s so small that there’s a sign on the door at the bank that says
if bank is closed, please slide money under door
...
I took a photo of
it and brought it back to show everyone because I knew they wouldn’t believe me
...
Anyway, Grandpa and Grandma Thermopolis don’t make it out of Indiana much
...
And I can’t introduce her now because then Lilly
will find out I’m the princess of Genovia, and you can bet I’ll never hear the end ofthat
...
That’s all I need:
My name and image plastered all over Manhattan Public Access
...
Geez
...
That would
have really made her mad
...
No way
...
Grandmère told me that for today I don’t have to wear lipstick or panty hose
...
So I wore my overalls
...
Hee hee hee
...
Lars just pulled up in front of the Plaza
...
Saturday, October 11
I can never go to school again
...
I will never leave
this loft, ever, ever again
...
I can’t believe what she did to me
...
Well, he’s going to pay
...
As soon as I
got home (right after my mom went, “Well, hey, Rosemary
...
Big time
...
Don’t listen to your mother, what does she know? I like your hair
...
short
...
Just pointed
at the door again, and said, “On y va,”which in English means “Let’s go
...
“Chez Paolo,” Grandmère said
...
” So I thought we
were going to meet one of her friends, maybe for brunch or something, and I thought,
huh, cool, field trip
...
But then we got there, and I saw Chez Paolo wasn’t a house at all
...
It looked a little like a really fancy hospital—it was all frosted
glass and these Japanese-looking trees
...
They were all excited to see my
grandmother, and took us to this little room where there were these couches and all
these magazines
...
Boy, was I ever wrong! Paolo isn’t a doctor
...
He takes unfashionable, frumpy
people like me, and he makes them stylish—for aliving
...
She has to tell some guy
namedPaolo that?
What kind of name is Paolo, anyway? I mean, this is America, for Pete’s sake!
YOUR NAME IS PAUL!!!
That’s what I wanted to scream at him
...
I mean, it wasn’t
Paolo’s fault my grandmother dragged me there
...
God, how embarrassing
...
Anyway, I was plenty peeved at Grandmère, but I couldn’t start yelling at her right
there in front of Paolo
...
She just sat there on this velvet couch,
petting Rommel, who was sitting on her lap with his legs crossed—she’s even taught
herdog to sit ladylike, andhe’s a boy—sipping a Sidecar she got somebody to make for
her and readingW
...
It mustall go
...
All of it
...
I still have some like bangs and a little
fringe in back
...
Did I mention that I’m no longer a dishwater blond? No
...
Oh, no
...
I am not kidding
...
They’re completely fake, but I have them
...
What kind of secret astronaut glue did that manicurist use, anyway?
You might be wondering why, if I didn’t want to have all my hair cut off and fake
fingernails glued over my real, stumpy fingernails, I let them do all that
...
I mean, I know I have a fear of confrontation
...
99 for
a cut and blow dry
...
I mean, I didn’t want to hurt
their feelings, or cause a scene, or anything like that
...
My
grandmother, I mean
...
I told myself that after we left Paolo’s and went to Bergdorf Goodman, where
Grandmère bought me four pairs of shoes that cost almost as much as the removal of
that sock from Fat Louie’s small intestines
...
I did tell her I would never wear these clothes, but
she just waved at me
...
You tell such amusing stories
...
There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been
pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized
...
But I am not happy
...
Grandmère’s happy
...
Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis
...
Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights
...
I don’t even know
who I am anymore
...
She’s turning me into someone else
...
“First she makes me do homework
...
Then she
gives me sitting lessons
...
“Well, Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m not Vicky, and I never will be, no matter how much
Grandmère dresses me up like her
...
That’s Vicky
...
She was wearing a new outfit
...
Her long hair was all over
the place, and she looked really great
...
“Mia,” my mom said as she fastened on an earring, “nobody is asking you to be
Vicky, the captain’s daughter
...
”
“Prepare me for what? I can’t go to school looking like this, you know,” I yelled
...
“Why not?”
Oh my God
...
“Mia, honey, they’re going to find out sometime
...
See, I have it all worked out: I’ll only be a princess in Genovia,
and since the chances of anybody I know from school ever actually going to Genovia
are like none, no one here will ever find out, so I’m totally safe from being branded a
freak, like Tina Hakim Baba
...
“Well,” my mom said, after I’d told her all this
...
My dad looked away and took a sip from his drink
...
He put down his drink, then he reached into
his pants pocket, took out his Prada wallet, opened it, and asked, “How much?”
I was shocked
...
“Phillipe,” she said, but my dad just kept looking at me
...
“I can see the compromise we drew up is getting us
nowhere
...
So how much do I
have to pay you, Mia, to let your grandmother turn you into a princess?”
“Is that what she’s doing?” I started yelling some more
...
I never saw a princess with hair this short, or feet as
big as mine, who didn’t have breasts!”
My dad just looked at his watch
...
I bet it was
another “interview” with that blond anchorwoman from ABC News
...
I will pay
your salary
...
Stuff I got from some of my mom’s old
records
...
G
...
”
Well
...
It would be one thing if he were payingme to
have my hair color chemically altered
...
I practically will have donated a million dollars by that time!
Wait, maybe that’s only $36,500
...
I don’t think anyone who was my friend would be as mean to me as Lilly was
tonight
...
And all because of myhair!
I guess I could understand it if Lilly was mad at me about something that mattered
—like missing the taping of the Ho segment
...
I also do a lot of the prop work
...
So I guess I could see how Lilly might kind of resent the fact that I missed today’s
taping
...
I think it’s kind of stupid
...
”
Whatever
...
Everest
...
I totally
washed it before I came over, and got all the mousse and goop out of it
...
I really thought, except for my hair, I
looked mostly normal
...
But I guess Lilly didn’t think so
...
Which it isn’t, by the way
...
“Yeah,” I said, taking off my coat
...
She was in this state of shock
...
”
“Well,” I said
...
”
“What’s on yourfingers? Are those fake fingernails? Lana has those, too!” She
stared at me all bug-eyed
...
You’re turning into Lana Weinberger!”
Now, that kind of peeved me off
...
In the second place, even if I am, Lilly’s the one who’s always going
on about how stupid people are for not seeing that it doesn’t matter what anybody looks
like; what matters is what’s going on on the inside
...
It was my grandmother
...
It
was the same look she gets every year when our PE instructor tells us we have to run
around the reservoir in Central Park for the Presidential Fitness test
...
“What are you?” she wanted to know
...
You seem to have real issues with your grandmother
...
I could have really used your help
today with the Ho segment, and you totally let me down
...
Now I had
to hear there was something wrong with my personality, too
...
I said, “Lilly,shut up
...
Not ever
...
It’s just not something I do
...
Maybe it was the fingernails
...
They sort of made
me feel strong
...
“Whoa,” he said, backing up
...
“What?” Lilly said
...
I totally wanted to back down
...
So instead I said, “I’m tired of you putting me down all the time
...
I don’t need
myfriends getting on my case, too
...
This time I knew it was because of what I said
...
You’re the one with the problem
...
Well, you know what? I’m going to solve your
problem for you
...
I never wanted to help you with your stupid Ho-Gate story
anyway
...
They haven’t done anything wrong
...
And”—I said this as I opened the door—“my hair isnot
yellow
...
I sort of slammed the door behind me, too
...
But she didn’t
...
I was thinking Lilly
might call to apologize, but so far she hasn’t
...
And you know what? I looked in the mirror a minute ago, and my hair doesn’t look
that bad
...
Sunday, October 12
Oh my God
...
I wish I could disappear
...
I walked out of my room to get breakfast, and there were my mom and Mr
...
Gianini was wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts!! My mom was in her
kimono!!! When she saw me, she choked on her orange juice
...
”
I wish I had
...
I could have
stayed over at the Moscovitzes’ and never had to look at Mr
...
I could have lived a full and happy life without ever having seenthat
...
How am I ever going to go to a review session again?
This is so horrible
...
Later on Sunday
Oh, okay
...
Gianini spent
the night on the futon couch because a train on the line he normally takes to his
apartment in Brooklyn derailed, and it was going to be out of service for hours, so she
told him to just stay over
...
That’s what Lilly always says when anybody’s mother has a
guy over and then lies about it
...
The only way I will ever pass Algebra is to
believe my mother’s lie, because I could never sit there and concentrate on polynomials
knowing that the guy in front of me has not only probably stuck his tongue in my mom’s
mouth but also probably seen her naked
...
After my mom came in and lied to me, I got dressed and went out into the kitchen
to make breakfast
...
Actually, she went, “Who do you think you are, anyway? The princess
of Genovia?”
Which I suppose she thinks is hysterically funny, but really it isn’t
...
Gianini had gotten dressed, too
...
I wasn’t feeling too jokey at first
...
G started talking about what it
would be like to see certain people from Albert Einstein in their pajamas
...
Mr
...
I kind of started to laugh, thinking about Principal Gupta in
sweat pants
...
Hill wears a negligee, one of those fancy ones with the
feathers and stuff
...
G said he thought Mrs
...
I wonder how Mr
...
Did he go out with Mrs
...
After breakfast, my mom and Mr
...
Ido have homework—Mr
...
I just didn’t really want to be hanging around with a couple
...
Only for the two weeks they went out, you sort of
couldn’t talk to Shameeka, because all she could talk about was Aaron
...
Gianini
...
But I
had a feeling if I went to Central Park I might have to see kissing
...
When it’s your mom and your Algebra teacher,
though
...
We’ve been best friends since kindergarten
...
One of us has to be the bigger
person and make the first move
...
She makes me laugh
...
Who else can I eat lunch
with? 5
...
REASONS I SHOULD NOT MAKE UP WITH LILLY
1
...
2
...
3
...
4
...
5
...
I hardly ever get instant messages, so I was totally
excited
...
Michael Moscovitz? What couldhe want?
Here’s what he wrote:
CRACKING:HEY, THERMOPOLIS
...
Me? Mental???
FTLOUIE:FOR YOUR INFORMATION, I DID NOT GO MENTAL
...
NOT THAT IT’S
ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS
...
I HAVE TO LIVE WITH HER, DON’T I?
FTLOUIE:WHY? IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?
CRACKING:YOU COULD SAY THAT
...
And you know she can’t have been
saying anything good
...
I’m so glad I don’t have a brother
...
WHAT’S SHE SAYING ABOUT ME?
CRACKING:THAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT’S WITH YOU THESE DAYS,
BUT EVER SINCE YOUR DAD CAME TO VISIT YOU’VE BEEN ACTING LIKE A
HEAD CASE
...
I’M SO SICK OF IT!! IF SHE WANTS TO BE
MY FRIEND, WHY CAN’T SHE JUST ACCEPT ME THE WAY I AM???
CRACKING:NO NEED TO YELL
...
BESIDES, SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE
CRITICIZING
...
FTLOUIE:WELL, SHE’S RIGHT
...
IT’S STUPID
...
ARE YOU STILL FLUNKING ALGEBRA?
Thatwas out of the blue
...
BUT CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT MR
...
WHY?
CRACKING:WHAT? MR
...
Maybe
Mr
...
Why did I tell Michael that?
FTLOUIE:IT WAS PRETTY AWFUL
...
I DON’T KNOW
...
CRACKING:YOUR MOM COULD DO A LOT WORSE THAN MR
...
IMAGINE
IF SHE WAS GOING OUT WITH MR
...
Mr
...
He thinks he’s God’s gift to women
...
Stuart’s desk, because if you do, he’ll reach out and rub your
shoulders like he’s giving you a massage, but everybody says he’s really just trying to see
whether or not you’re wearing a bra
...
Stuart, I would move to Afghanistan
...
WHY’D YOU WANT TO KNOW WHETHER OR NOT
I’M FLUNKING ALGEBRA?
CRACKING:OH, BECAUSE I’M DONE WITH THIS MONTH’S ISSUE OF
CRACKHEAD, AND I THOUGHT IF YOU WANTED, I COULD TUTOR YOU
DURING G & T
...
Michael Moscovitz, offering to do something for me? I couldn’t believe it
...
FTLOUIE:WOW, THAT WOULD BE GREAT! THANKS!
CRACKING:DON’T MENTION IT
...
Then he signed off
...
I should definitely fight with Lilly more often
...
He
said he was sending Lars over to pick me up so me and him and Grandmère could have
dinner together at the Plaza
...
But I guess that’s okay, since Mom didn’t want to go anyway
...
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said
...
”
She’s been really cheerful ever since she got back from Central Park
...
G went on one of those dorky carriage rides
...
Those carriage
drivers don’t take care of their horses at all
...
I had always vowed never to ride in one of those
carriages
...
Love can do strange things to people
...
I guess I’m getting used to it
...
Grandmère and my dad were both in kind of bad moods
...
I guess they’re not getting paid to spend time with each other, like I kind of am
...
Grandmère went on and on about which fork to use with
what and why
...
One was fish,
though, so I ate that, plus dessert, which was a big fancy tower of chocolate
...
But I told her I would have my staff explain to my hosts ahead of
time that I don’t eat meat, so not to serve me any
...
I guess it never occurred to her that I might have
watched that made-for-TV movie about Princess Diana
...
All through dinner, Dad kept asking me these weird questions about Mom
...
Gianini, and did I want him to say
something to her
...
G and my mom, I mean
...
My mom only lets guys
she really, really likes spend the night
...
G, that’s only been three
guys in the past fourteen years: Wolfgang, who turned out to be gay; this guy Tim, who
turned out to be a Republican; and now my Algebra teacher
...
It’s only like one guy every four years
...
But of course I couldn’t tell my dad that Mr
...
He is such a chauvinist—he has girlfriends stay over at
Miragnac every summer, sometimes a new one every two weeks!—but he expects Mom
to stay pure as the driven snow
...
A part of me wanted to tell my dad about Mr
...
But I didn’t want to give my grandmother any more ammunition against my mom—
Grandmère says my mom is “flighty”—so I just pretended like I didn’t know anything
about it
...
She says my
French is atrocious but my English is even worse
...
I said, “Whatever, Grandmère,” and she shot me this way dirty look
...
I really forgot
...
I’m probably going to go down in history
as the girl who saved all the whales
...
Alsotwo sets of plastic chopsticks andtwo bottles of Heineken in the recycling bin
...
G over for dinner—my God, she’d spent the whole day
with him already!—and she said, “Oh, no, honey
...
”
That’s two lies she’s told me in one day
...
G must be pretty
serious
...
I’m starting to think maybeI should callher
...
I mean, I know I told her to shut up, but that was only
because she told me I was turning into Lana Weinberger
...
Or did I? Maybe nobody has a right to tell anybody to shut up
...
If this keeps up, who am I going to eat lunch with tomorrow?
Monday, October 13, Algebra
When Lars pulled up in front of Lilly’s building to pick her up for school, her
doorman said she’d already left
...
This is the longest fight we’ve ever had
...
When I walked into school, the first thing somebody did was shove a petition in my
Boycott Ho’s Deli!
Sign below and take a stand against racism!
I said I wouldn’t sign it, and Boris, who was the person holding it, told me I was
ungrateful, and that in the country he came from voices raised in protest had been
crushed for years by the government, and that I should feel lucky I lived in a place
where I could sign a petition and not live in fear that the secret police would come after
me
...
One thing you have to say for Lilly: She acts fast
...
The other thing you have to say about Lilly: When she’s mad, she stays mad
...
I wish Mr
...
Whocares about integers, anyway?
Operations on Real Numbers: negatives or opposites—numbers on opposite sides
of the zero but the same distance from zero on the number line are called negatives or
opposites
What to Do During Algebra
O what to do during Algebra! The possibilities are limitless: There’s drawing, and
yawning, and portable chess
...
There’s humming, and strumming, and looking bemused
...
You can hum a little song
...
BUT NOTHING WORKS!!!!!
Later on Monday, French
So even if Lilly and I weren’t in a fight, I wouldn’t have been able to sit with her at
lunch today
...
All these people were
clustered around the table where she and I and Shameeka and Ling Su normally eat
our dumplings from Big Wong
...
Lilly must be in heaven
...
So I was standing there like a total idiot with my stupid tray of stupid salad, which
was the only vegetarian entree today, since they ran out of cans of Sterno for the bean
and grain bar, and I was like, Who amI going to sit by? There are only about ten tables
in our caf, since we have rotating lunch shifts: There’s the table where I sit with Lilly,
and then the jock table, the cheerleader table, the rich kid table, the hip-hop table, the
druggie table, the drama freak table, the National Honor Society table, the foreign
exchange students table, and the table where Tina Hakim Baba sits every day with her
bodyguard
...
I couldn’t
sit at the rich kids’ table because I don’t have a cell phone or a broker
...
I looked at Tina Hakim Baba
...
Only
Tina eats salad because she has a weight problem, not because she’s a vegetarian
...
It had a photograph on the front of a teenage boy with
his arms around a teenage girl
...
She looked exactly the way I know my
grandmother wants me to look
...
“Can I sit here?” I asked
...
She had an expression of total shock on her face
...
He was a tall, dark-skinned
man in a black suit
...
I think Lars
could probably have taken him, if it had come down to a fight between the two of them
...
me
...
“Please,” she said, laying down her book
...
I felt kind of bad, seeing Tina smile like that
...
But I used to think she was such a freak because she
rode to school in a limo and had a bodyguard
...
Tina and I ate our salads and talked about how much school food sucks
...
Her mother put her on it
...
But the Cultural Diversity Dance is this Saturday, so I don’t
know how that’s going to work out for her
...
She’s going with a guy from Trinity, which is another private school in Manhattan
...
Hello? It isn’t fair
...
Well, she’s got breasts, so I guess that’s why
...
When she got up to go to the jet line to get another diet soda—
the bodyguard went with her; God, if Lars ever started shadowing me like that, I’d kill
myself—I read the back of her book
...
This really cute boy comes to visit her in the hospital and tells her that her name is
Amanda and that he’s her boyfriend
...
I am so sure! If some cute boy wants to tell you that he’s your boyfriend, why
wouldn’t you justlet him? Some girls don’t know when they’ve got it made
...
It must have been a game day, because she had on her
cheerleader uniform, a green-and-white pleated miniskirt and a tight white sweater with
a giantA across the front of it
...
Otherwise, I don’t see how her chest could stick out so much
...
“Who are you supposed to be?
Tank Girl?”
I looked past her
...
They weren’t paying any attention to me and Lana
...
They were all “wrecked” from having consumed
too much beer
...
“What do you call this color, anyway?” Lana wanted to know
...
“Pus yellow?”
Tina Hakim Baba and her bodyguard came back while Lana was standing there
tormenting me
...
I thought this was very nice of her, considering the
fact that I’d hardly ever spoken to her before
...
Instead she asked, all innocently,
“Oh, Tina, did you buy that ice cream for Amelia here? Did your daddy give you an
extra hundred dollars today so you could buy yourself a new friend?”
Tina’s dark eyes filled up with hurt
...
Then a strange thing happened
...
Lana looked down at the vanilla ice cream, hard chocolate shell, and peanuts that
were sticking to her chest
...
The noise level in the cafeteria plummeted to the quietest I’ve
heard it
...
It was so
quiet I could hear Boris breathing through the wires of his bionater
...
“You—you—” I guess she couldn’t think of a word bad enough to call me
...
Look what you’ve done! Look what you’ve done to my sweater!”
I stood up and grabbed my tray
...
“Let’s go somewhere a
little bit quieter
...
The bodyguard followed Tina
...
As Tina and I walked past the table where Lilly and I usually sat, I saw Lilly
staring at me with her mouth open
...
Well, I guess she’s going to have change her diagnosis: I amnot unassertive
...
I’m not sure, but as Tina and her bodyguard and I left, I thought I heard some
applause coming from the geek table
...
Later on Monday
Oh my God
...
Nothing like this has ever happened to me
before!
I am sitting in the principal’s office!
That’s right
...
She is such a big whiner
...
I’ve never disobeyed a student rule before
...
When the student worker came to our G & T class with the pink hall
pass, I never thought for a minute it might be for me
...
He was showing me that the way I subtract is all wrong
...
Also that I
don’t keep track of my notes, and scribble them in whatever notebook I happen to have
handy
...
Also, he says I seem to have trouble concentrating
...
But he’s still a boy, acute boy, even if heis Lilly’s brother
...
Plus every once in a while he would put his hand over mine and take my pencil
away and go, “No, likethis, Mia
...
She wasn’t, of course
...
She was
sitting at this big table with all of her supporters, plotting their next move in the Ho
Offensive
...
May I point out that he was all over her? How she can stand having his spindly
little violin-stroking arm around the back of her chair, I can’t imagine
...
So I really shouldn’t have worried that anybody was going to notice me and
Michael
...
Although once, under the table, his knee touched my knee
...
Then that stupid hall pass arrived withmy name on it
...
Maybe if I get expelled I could go to a
different school, where nobody knows that my hair used to be a different color and that
these fingernails aren’t really real
...
FROM NOW ON I WILL
1
...
2
...
3
...
4
...
Uh-oh
...
Monday Night
Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do now
...
G,plus princess lessons with Grandmère
...
Something hasgot to give
...
He says he is going to sue the school
...
I told him that Principal Gupta can
...
She’s the principal
...
I mean, it wasn’t like I said I was sorry or anything
...
She told
me I’d have to apologize to Lana and pay to have her sweater cleaned
...
Principal Gupta looked at me over the rims of
her bifocals and went, “I beg your pardon, Mia?”
I repeated that I wouldn’t apologize
...
I didn’t want
to make anybody mad, especially Principal Gupta, who can be very scary when she
wants to
...
She still
scared me
...
I won’t
...
She looked concerned
...
You know
...
She went, “Mia, I
must say, when Lana came in here with her complaint, I was extremely surprised
...
I never expected I was going to have to
pullyou in
...
Academic reasons, maybe
...
But I’ve never known you to be a discipline problem
before
...
is everything all right?”
For a minute I just stared at her
...
my mom is going out with my Algebra
teacher, a subject I’m flunking, by the way; my best friend hates me; I’m fourteen years
old and I’ve never been asked out; I don’t have any breasts; and oh, I just found out
I’m the princess of Genovia
...
“Everything is fine
...
maybe at home?”
Who did she think I was, anyway? LanaWhine berger? Like I was really going to
sit there and tell her my problems
...
On top of all that other stuff,
my grandmother is in town, and my dad is paying $100 a day for me to get lessons from
her in how to be a princess
...
Gianini in my kitchen,
and all he was wearing was a pair of boxer shorts
...
You have many wonderful qualities
...
None at all
...
Just because she’s the prettiest, most popular girl in my class, and she’s
going out with the handsomest, most popular boy in school, you’re right, Principal
Gupta
...
Especially since she puts me
down every chance she gets and tries to humiliate me in public
...
“You know, Mia,” Principal Gupta said, “I bet if you took the time to get to know
Lana you’d find that she’s really a very nice girl
...
”
Right
...
I was so upset, I actually told Grandmère all about it at our vocabulary lesson
...
“When I was a girl your age,” Grandmère said, “there was a girl just like this Lana
at my school
...
She sat behind me in Geography
...
But the teacher would never believe me that Genevieve did it on
purpose
...
That Genevieve had some guts
...
“What did you do?”
Grandmère let out this evil laugh
...
”
There is no way she didnothing to Genevieve
...
But no
matter how hard I pestered her, Grandmère wouldn’t tell me what she did to get back at
Genevieve
...
Well? It could happen
...
I’ve stapled it in here, since I got a 98
...
Grandmère’s Test
In a restaurant, what does one do with one’s napkin when one rises to go to the
powder room?
If it’s a four-star restaurant, hand it to the waiter who rushes over to help you with
your chair
...
Under what circumstances is it acceptable to apply lipstick in public?
Never
...
What is the appropriate reply to make to a man who says he loves you?
Thank you
...
What did Marx consider to be the contradiction in capitalism?
The value of any commodity is determined by the amount of labor needed to produce
it
...
White shoes are unacceptable
...
Describe an oligarchy
...
Describe a Sidecar
...
The only one I missed was the one about what to say to a man when he tells you he
loves you
...
Not, of course, that this will ever happen to me
...
I wish!
Tuesday, October 14, Homeroom
No Lilly again this morning
...
But I made Lars stop
at her place anyway, just in case maybe she wanted to be friends again
...
But I guess not
...
We sort of smiled at each other, then walked into
school together, her bodyguard behind us
...
She said she told her parents about it, and that they want me to
come over for dinner Friday night
...
”
I said, “Okay
...
I also said it because I heard she has a fountain in her house, just like Donald Trump,
and I wanted to see if that was true
...
She’snice to me
...
I HAVEGOT TO
1
...
Make more friends 3
...
Stop biting my fake
fingernails 5
...
Responsible B
...
Mature 6
...
Achieve self-actualization 8
...
Oh my God
...
But it must be true, since Shameeka just told
Lillyhas a date to the Cultural Diversity Dance this weekend
...
EvenLilly has a date
...
But there’s one boy who’s not:
Boris Pelkowski
...
Ever
...
I’m the only one not going
...
Why was I born under such an unlucky star? Why didI have to be cursed with such
freakishness? Why? WHY???
I would give anything if, instead of being a five-foot-nine flat-chested princess, I
could be a five-foot-six normal person with breasts
...
Satire—employs humor systematically for the purpose of persuasion
Irony—counter to expectation
Parody—close imitation that exaggerates ridiculous or objectionable features
More Tuesday, French
Today in G & T, in between showing me how to carry over, Michael Moscovitz
complimented me on my handling of what he called the Weinberger Incident
...
He said it was all over school, about how I’d decimated
Lana in front of Josh
...
He said, “That must be awkward,” but I told him actually it wasn’t, since Lana
seems to be avoiding that area lately, and Josh never talks to me at all, except to say,
“Can I get by here?” once in a while
...
She just doesn’t understand why you
blew up at her like that
...
I
have too many other problems without having friends who aren’t supportive of me
...
“What kind of problems couldyou have?”
Like I was too much of a kid or something to have problems!
Boy, did I straighten him out
...
Gianini in his boxer shorts eating breakfast with my mom
...
The whole time Michael and I were talking, I saw Lilly shooting us these looks
from behind the poster board she was writing Ho-Gate slogans on with a big black
Magic Marker
...
Or maybe she’s just sore because her boycott of Ho’s Deli is creating serious
turmoil within the school
...
And why not? Because of Lilly’s campaign, now they
know they can get a five-cent discount on just about anything
...
This has caused some serious division
within the ranks of the protesters
...
And since
all the popular kids in school smoke, they aren’t honoring the boycott at all
...
When you can’t get the popular kids on your side, you have to realize it’s hopeless:
Without celebrity supporters, no cause stands a chance
...
He went, “So, are you
grounded?”
I looked at him kind of funny
...
My mom is totally on my side
...
”
Michael said, “Oh
...
Hill came in and made us all fill out questionnaires for the Ph
...
she’s doing on urban youth violence, even though Lilly complained that we’re hardly
qualified to comment, seeing as how the only youth violence any of us had ever
experienced was when there was a sale on relaxed fit jeans at the Gap on Madison
Avenue
...
I knew what Michael was
going to ask me, see
...
And I just didn’t think I could take it
...
me?
But I didn’t want to be rude, so I left before he could ask me
...
mamontes
tatontes
sasonses
notrenotrenos
votrevotrevos
leurleurleurs
HOMEWORK
Algebra: pg
...
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
...
They own
about a gazillion oil wells
...
I asked Grandmère what
kind of gift, and she said breakfast
...
Being a princess is hard work
...
It had a cover
just like the last one, only this time the heroine was a brunette
...
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
...
How come things like that don’t ever happen tome?
Wednesday, October 15, Homeroom
No Lilly again today
...
I guess he’s right
...
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
...
Parents can be so selfcentered: Before they do something illegal, they should totally stop and think about how
their kids are going to feel if they get caught
...
I just walked right on by to show I wasn’t going to have any part in gossip
...
I guess Michael’s right: It reallyhas gotten around, about me
stabbing Lana with that Nutty Royale
...
But I checked in the mirror in the girls’ room and it wasn’t
...
Sometimes I wish I lived on a desert island
...
With nobody else around for
hundreds of miles
...
And maybe a high-definition 37-inch TV with a satellite dish and a Sony
PlayStation with Bandicoot, for when I get bored
...
The most commonly asked question at Albert Einstein High School is “Do you
have any gum?” 2
...
3
...
4
...
Later on Wednesday, Before Algebra
This totally weird thing happened
...
I swear to God I am not making this up
...
I don’t have any idea
what I said to him
...
Ihope I said I was fine
...
Then Josh slammed his locker closed,looked right down into my face —he’s really
tall—and said, “See you later
...
It took me five minutes to stop hyperventilating
...
Wednesday, Principal Gupta’s Office
It’s over
...
That’s it
...
I know why they were
whispering and giggling
...
I know why
Josh Richter talked to me
...
That’s right
...
Read by millions of New Yorkers daily
...
I’m dead
...
I guess somebody took it as I was leaving
the Plaza Sunday night, after dinner with Grandmère and my dad
...
I’m sort of smiling, only not at the camera
...
Superimposed over the photo are the wordsPrincess Amelia, and then in smaller
lettersNew York’s Very Own Royal
...
Just great
...
Gianini was the one who figured it out
...
He called my mother
...
Mr
...
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
...
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
...
G had no choice but to call my dad at the Plaza, which was pretty
nervy of him, if you think about it
...
G, my dad blew a gasket
...
G that until he could get there, I should be sent to the principal’s office, where I
would be “safe
...
Actually, I shouldn’t say that
...
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
...
“Well,” I said, “I didn’t think anybody would believe me
...
”
That’s what the story on page 2 of thePost said, too
...
Carol Fernandez,
put it
...
Like I should behappy about it
...
Carol Fernandez went on at length about my mom, “the raven-haired avantgarde 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
...
Then she went on to describe me as “the statuesque beauty who is the product of
Helen and Phillipe’s tempestuous whirlwind college romance
...
Yeah, I’m TALL
...
But I am no
beauty
...
No wonder everybody was laughing at me
...
I mean, really
...
Boy, doeshe look mad
...
This is totally, completely unfair
...
Anybody else’s dad, if
his kid’s picture was on the front of thePost, would say, “Maybe you should skip school
for a few days until things calm down
...
How
do you feel about Iowa? Would you like to go to school in Iowa?”
But oh, no
...
Becausehe’s a prince
...
No, they stay where they are
and slug it out
...
I think my dad has something in common with Carol Fernandez:
They’re BOTH on crack
...
Right!
One hundred lousy bucks! One hundred lousy bucks a day to be publicly ridiculed and
humiliated
...
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
...
I tried to tell my dad that
...
They’re all
laughing at me
...
You’re just going to have to tough it out
...
I’d hoped it wouldn’t be quite this soon,
but it’s probably just as well to get it over with
...
I thought I was
going to be able to keep this whole princess thing a secret
...
I have to be a princess right here in
Manhattan, and believe me, that is no picnic
...
He got all offended
...
” He shot this funny
look at Mr
...
“What?” Mr
...
“Me?I’d never
evenheard of Genovia until this morning
...
“Don’t blame Mr
...
He had nothing to do with it
...
“Well,somebody leaked the story to the
press
...
You could totally tell he thought Mr
...
But it couldn’t have been Mr
...
Carol Fernandez wrote about stuff in her
story that there’s no way Mr
...
Like how Miragnac has a private airstrip
...
But when I told my dad that, he just shot Mr
...
“Well,” he said
again
...
”
And while my dad was doing that, I got stuck with Lars
...
Just like
Tina Hakim Baba, I now have a bodyguard trailing around after me from class to class
...
I now have an armed escort
...
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 inMy Secret Love, only my dad didn’t say that because he’s never
readMy Secret Love
...
This isschool,” but he wouldn’t go for
it
...
”
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
...
But really the only reason is that she is totally charmed by my father
...
I practically expected him to kiss her hand, he was
flirting so hard with her
...
And she totally fell for it! She was eating
it up!
I wonder if Tina Hakim Baba will still sit with me at lunch
...
More Wednesday, French Class
I guess I should have my picture on the front of thePost more often
...
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
...
That lousy hypocrite wants to be friends with me now that
I’m a princess
...
But did Lana invite Tina to join her? Of course
not
...
” Short, heavyset girls—
even one whose father is an Arab sheikh—aren’t good enough to sit byLana
...
Only purebred Genovian princesses are good enough to sit byLana
...
“No, thanks, Lana,” I said
...
”
You should have seen Lana’s face
...
Later, when we were sitting down, Tina could only nibble at her salad
...
Meanwhile, though, everybody in the whole
cafeteria—including the geeks, who never notice anything—were staring at our table
...
I could feel Lilly’s eyes boring into me
...
Nothing much
escapes Lilly
...
I put down a forkful of rice and
beans and said, “Look, Tina
...
”
Tina’s big eyes filled up with tears
...
She shook her head, and her long
black braid swayed
...
“You don’t like me anymore,
Mia?”
It was my turn to be shocked
...
I thought maybe you
might not likeme
...
I could see why you might not want
to sit with me
...
“Everyone always stares at me,” she said
...
”
Wahim is her bodyguard
...
It was
kind of a disturbing topic, but they both seemed happy as could be
...
“So you see,” Tina said, “I’mused to people thinking I’m weird
...
You could be sitting with anyone—anyone in this whole cafeteria—and yet
you’re stuck with me
...
”
I got really mad then
...
But at everybody else at Albert Einstein
...
While people are worrying about things like the fact that a deli is
overcharging some people by five cents for gingko biloba rings, there are human beings
walking around our school in abject misery because no one will even say Good morning
to them, or How was your weekend?
And then I felt guilty, because a week agoI had been one of those people
...
The whole reason I hadn’t wanted
anyone to find out I was a princess was that I was afraid they’d treatme the way they
treated Tina Hakim Baba
...
So I told Tina I didn’t want to sit with anybody but her
...
I told
her we needed to stick together because everyone else at this stupid school is completely
NUTS
...
This one is calledLove Only Once, and it’s about a girl who falls in love with a
boy who has terminal cancer
...
So I guess that’s okay then
...
It wasn’t the kind of
stare someone who was about to apologize would use
...
Boris kept on
trying to talk to her, but she obviously wasn’t listening
...
Meanwhile, this is how my tutoring session with Lilly’s brother went:
Me:Hi, Michael
...
But I still don’t see why you
couldn’t just look at the train schedule to find out what time a train traveling at 67 miles
per hour will arrive in Fargo, North Dakota, if it leaves Salt Lake City at 7A
...
Michael:So
...
Michael:Well, that’s obvious
...
It’s not like it’s a bad thing
...
I’m not going to read that trash
...
It was like she couldn’t stand not to get involved
...
Me:Um
...
Michael:Considering that the people of Genovia have traditionally never paid
income or property taxes, I would say none of it
...
But I happen to think that it’s disgusting, with the world economy in the
state it’s in today, for anyone to have a total worth of three hundred million dollars
...
His father’s historic pledge, after Mussolini’s forces
invaded in 1939, to exercise the rights of sovereignty in accordance with the political
and economic interests of neighboring France in exchange for military and naval
protection in the event of war might have tied the hands of a lesser politician, but Mia’s
father has managed to work around that agreement
...
I could only stare at Michael after that
...
Why doesn’t Grandmère teach me
stuff likethat at our princess lessons? I mean, this is information I could actually use
...
I need to know how to
defend myself from virulent antiroyalists like my ex–best friend Lilly
...
(to me) I see they already have you spouting off their
populist propaganda like a good little girl
...
Lilly:I am not!
Michael:Yes, you are
...
You’re jealous because you stopped talking to her and she went out and
got a new friend
...
Lilly:Michael, SHUT UP!
Boris:(leaning out of the supply closet door) Lilly? Did you say something?
Lilly:I WASN’T TALKING TO YOU, BORIS!
Boris:Sorry
...
I wonder if maybe it ever occurred to you that your argument, while
ostensibly based on logic, might have less intellectual than libidinous roots
...
Michael:It isn’t
...
Wow
...
Grandmère’s right: I need to improve my
vocabulary
...
Michael:Really?Everywhere?
Me:Everywhere except the ladies’ room
...
Michael:What if you were to go on a date? Like to the Cultural Diversity Dance
this weekend?
Me:That hasn’t exactly been an issue, considering that no one’s asked me
...
I accidentally knocked over a
bottle of rubber cement with my bow, and it’s getting hard to breathe
...
Hill:(poking her head in from the hallway) What’s all this noise in here? We
can hardly hear ourselves think in the teachers’ lounge
...
Everybody else, get back to work!
I need to take a closer look at that article in today’sPost
...
I am not even kidding
...
According to Mr
...
There were vans there from New York One, Fox News, CNN,Entertainment
Tonight —you name it
...
Mr
...
Which, if you think about it, is exactly what all the popular kids do when they hang
around the school grounds after the last bell rings, and Principal Gupta never calls the
cops onthem
...
I have to say, I sort of know now how Princess Diana must have felt
...
G and I came out, the reporters started trying to swarm all over, waving
microphones at us and yelling stuff like, “Amelia, how about a smile?” and “Amelia,
what’s it like to wake up one morning the product of a single-parent family and go to
bed the next night a royal princess worth over three hundred million dollars?”
I was kind of scared
...
Plus I was practically
rendered blind by all the flashbulbs going off in front of my face
...
You should have seen it
...
Then he put his arm around me
...
G to put his arm around my
other side
...
Hello! I guess all that training in the Israeli army paid off
...
Wahim and Lars actually
have some mutual friends, it turns out
...
)
Anyway, as soon as Lars slammed the back door shut, he said “Drive,” and the guy
behind the wheel hit the gas
...
And while we’re pulling away, brakes squealing, flashbulbs
going off, reporters jumping onto the windshield to get a better shot, my dad goes, all
casual, “So
...
Instead, I turned around in my seat to wave good-bye to
Mr
...
Only Mr
...
He just kept waving his hands at them and trying to head for the subway,
so he could take the E train home
...
Gianini then
...
I said so to my dad, also that we should have given Mr
...
He said, “Damn these things
...
”
So then I asked my dad where I was going to go to school now
...
“You said you wanted to stay at Albert
Einstein!” he kind of yelled
...
Then my dad wanted to know what outing was, so I explained to him that outing is
when somebody reveals your sexual orientation on national TV, or in the newspaper, or
in some other large public forum
...
So then my dad said I couldn’t go to a new school just because I’d been outed as
being a princess
...
So then I asked him who’ll drive him around, and he pointed to the new guy, Hans
...
”
So then I said, “Lars is going to go with me everywhere I go?” Like how about if I
just wanted to walk over to Lilly’s? I mean, if Lilly and I were still friends
...
And my dad said, “Lars would go with you
...
This made me kind of mad
...
I don’t want to be a princess
anymore
...
I quit
...
The article today closed
the deal
...
Everyone will know that you are the princess Amelia of Genovia
...
”
I guess it wasn’t a very princessy thing to do, but I cried all the way to the Plaza
...
More Wednesday
My mom thinks the person who tipped off Carol Fernandez is Grandmère
...
Especially when I’m so far behind in my princess
lessons
...
So far all Grandmère has taught me is how to sit; how to dress;
how to use a fish fork; how to address senior members of the royal household staff; how
to say thank you so much and no, I don’t care for that, in seven languages; how to make
a Sidecar; and some Marxist theory
...
Nothing will change her mind
...
She says Grandmère is the one who tipped off Carol
Fernandez and that all my dad has to do is ask her and he’ll find out the truth
...
Mom
...
The minute he said it, I think my dad probably regretted it
...
Her eyes got narrower and narrower,
until they were nothing more than little slits
...
Only she didn’t put on her coat when my dad said that about Mr
...
Instead,
her eyes got very narrow, and her lips almost disappeared, she pressed them together so
hard, and then she went, “Get
...
But my dad wouldn’t get out, even though technically the loft belongs to my mom
(thank God Carol Fernandez didn’t put the loft’s address in the paper; and thank God
my mom is so paranoid about Jesse Helms siccing the CIA on sociopolitical artists like
herself, in order to yank their NEA grants, that she keeps our phone number unlisted;
no reporters have discovered the loft, so we can at least order in Chinese without fear of
hearing a story onExtra on how much the Princess Amelia likes moo shu vegetable)
...
I think you’re letting your dislike of my
mother blind you to the real truth
...
“The real truth, Phillipe, is that your mother is
At this point, I decided it might be best to retire to my room
...
This is a trick I learned from watching kids
on made-for-TV movies whose parents are divorcing
...
Once I had a dream Iwas Britney, and I was
performing in the auditorium at Albert Einstein, and I had this little pink minidress on,
and Josh Richter complimented me on it right before I went onstage
...
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but it’s really hard to write with my new fake
fingernails
...
I mean, when I went to my princess lesson
today I was still crying, and Grandmère was totally unsympathetic about it
...
?” And when I told her, she just raised her painted-on
eyebrows—she plucks hers all out and draws on new ones every day, which kind of
defeats the purpose, if you ask me, but whatever—and went,“C’est la vie,” which means
“Well, that’s life” in French
...
I didn’t do anything except get born
...
I think that sucks, is what I think
...
I couldn’t believe it! I was like, “Grandmère! I don’t want to talk to Barbara
Walters! God! Like I really want everyone knowing my business!”
And Grandmère said, all prissy, “Well, if you don’t try to accommodate the media,
they’re just going to try to get the story any way they can, which means they’ll keep
showing up at your school
...
”
Grandmère doesn’t believe in VCRs
...
Then Grandmère wanted to know where my sense of civic duty was
...
I really want to do what’s best for Genovia
...
But I also have to do what’s
best for Mia Thermopolis
...
But Grandmère seems really gung-ho on the whole promoting Genovia thing
...
Maybe Grandmèredid
talk to Carol Fernandez
...
Yeah
...
They’re still at it
...
Thursday, October 16, Homeroom
Well, this morning my face was on the covers of theDaily News andNew York
Newsday
...
They used
my school photo, and let me tell you, my mom wasn’t too happy about that, since that
meant either somebody in our family, to whom she sent copies of that photo—which
looks bad for Grandmère—or someone at Albert Einstein must have leaked it, which
looks bad for Mr
...
I wasn’t too happy about it because my school photo was
taken before Paolo fixed my hair and I look like one of those girls who are always going
on TV to talk about their bad experience being in a cult or escaping from an abusive
husband or something
...
I guess all the morning news shows needed something
they could report live
...
But today it was
me
...
So, in flagrant violation of my grandmother’s fashion
dictums, I wore my newly relaced combat boots (in case I had to kick anybody holding a
microphone who got too close), and I also wore all of my Greenpeace and antifur
buttons, so at least my celebrity status will be put to good use
...
Lars took me by the arm and the two of us
sprinted through a sea of TV cameras and microphones into the school
...
I started to turn around, but Lars dragged me on
into the school
...
Think of some way to get Lilly to like me again 2
...
Stop lyingand/orThink of better lies 4
...
Start being more A
...
Self-reliant C
...
Stop thinking about Josh Richter 7
...
Get better grades 9
...
Gianini was totally trying to teach us about the Cartesian
plane, but nobody could pay attention because of all the news vans outside
...
Gianini kept trying to bring people to order, but it was impossible
...
”
That’s kind of harder to say than “You killed Princess Di! Bring back Princess
Di!” so maybe that’s why
...
So then Mr
...
And then somebody tried to say the driver hadn’t
been drunk, that he’d been poisoned and that it was all a plot by the British secret
service, but Mr
...
And then Lana Weinberger wanted to know how long I’d known I was a princess,
and I couldn’t believe she was actually asking me a question without being snotty about
it, and I was like, well, I don’t know, a couple of weeks or something, and then Lana
said if she found out she was a princess she would go straight to Disneyworld, and I
said, no, you wouldn’t, because you’d miss cheerleading practice, and then she said she
didn’t see why I didn’t go to Disneyworld since I’m not even that involved in
extracurricular activities, and then Lilly started in about the Disneyfication of America
and how Walt Disney was actually a fascist, and then everybody started wondering if it
was really true about his body being cryogenically frozen under the castle in Anaheim,
and then Mr
...
Cartesian coordinate system divides the plane into 4 parts called quadrants
Thursday, G & T
So I was eating lunch with Tina Hakim Baba and Lars and Wahim, and Tina was
telling me about how in Saudi Arabia, where her father comes from, girls have to wear
this thing called a chadrah, which is like a huge blanket that covers them from head to
foot with just a slit for them to see out of
...
Well, like wewould do if any boys liked us
...
I forgot that Tina has a boy to hang out with, her Cultural
Diversity date, Dave Farouq El-Abar
...
What iswrong with me, anyway? How come no boys likeme?
So Tina was telling me all about chadrahs when all of a sudden Lana Weinberger
set her tray down next to ours
...
Lana Weinberger
...
It was loaded down with two
double cheeseburgers, large fries, two chocolate milks, a bowl of chili, a bag of Doritos,
a salad with French dressing, a pack of Yodels, an apple, and a large Coke
...
I am not even kidding
...
He went, “Hey,” to me and sat down and started eating
...
But they were busy arguing over whether rubber-tipped bullets really did
hurt rioters or if it was better just to use hoses
...
Really attractive people, like Lana and Josh, don’t ever go anywhere alone
...
Lana’s entourage consists
of a bunch of other girls, most of whom are junior varsity cheerleaders like she is
...
Josh’s entourage consists of a bunch of senior boys who are all on the crew team
with him
...
Josh’s entourage put their trays down beside Josh’s
...
And soon, our table, which had consisted only of two geeky girls
and their bodyguards, was being graced by the most beautiful people in Albert Einstein
—maybe even in all of Manhattan
...
“So,” Lana said, all chatty-like, while she picked at her salad—no dressing, and
only water on the side
...
“Uh,” I said brilliantly
...
”
“Because Josh’s parents are going away, and we were thinking about having a
thing at his place on Saturday night, after the dance, and all
...
”
“Huh,” I said
...
“Shouldn’t she, Josh?”
Josh was shoveling chili into his mouth using Doritos instead of a spoon
...
“She should come
...
“Josh’s place is likegreat
...
On Park Avenue
...
Isn’t there a
Jacuzzi, Josh?”
Josh said, “Yeah, there’s—”
Pierce, a member of Josh’s entourage, and a six-foot-two-inch rower, interrupted
...
”
Lana giggled
...
Remember, Josh? She drank practically the whole thing herself—what a hog!—and
then she wouldn’t stop throwing up
...
“She had to have her stomach pumped,” Lana said to Tina and me
...
”
We all turned to look at Josh
...
”
Lana stopped giggling
...
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say about that, so I just said, “Wow
...
She ate a shred of lettuce and swished some water around in her
mouth
...
“I can’t
...
Josh’s friends, however, went right on eating
...
“No,” I said
...
”
“What do you mean, youcan’t?”
I thought about lying
...
I could have said, I can’t go
because I have to go christen a cruise ship
...
But for once, for once in my stupid life, I went and told the truth
...
”
Oh, my God
...
I totally
should have lied
...
Worse than a freak
...
A grade A nerd
...
It wasn’t even
thereal truth
...
I mean,
it’s true there was no way my mom was going tolet me go to a party in a boy’s apartment
when his parents are out of town
...
But the real reason, of
course, is that I wouldn’t know how toact at a party like that
...
There are likewhole rooms reserved for people to go into to make
out
...
Maybe even MORE than French kissing
...
Maybe even below-the-waist touching
...
No
one I know is popular enough to get invited
...
But I don’t drink, and I don’t have anybody to make out
with
...
Loud
...
Well, I guess I can’t really blame her
...
“You can’t be serious
...
I didn’t really care so much about me, but I felt bad for Tina Hakim Baba, who’d
managed to keep such a low profile for so long
...
“Oh my God,” Lana said
...
“No
...
I didn’t know what she was talking about
...
Nobody tells their mom thetruth
...
Duh
...
She meant lie
...
Lana had obviously never met my mom
...
You just can’t
...
No way
...
Besides, I don’t even drink
...
Lana looked at me like I’d just said I’d never watchedParty of Five, or something
...
The truth is, at Miragnac I do drink
...
That’s just what you do in France
...
You drink it because it goes with the food
...
I wouldn’t know about that, since I don’t eat foie gras, but I can tell you from
experience that wine goes better with goat cheese than Dr Pepper does
...
Not even
for Josh Richter
...
I try to be respectful of my body and not put a
whole lot of toxins into it
...
”
Lana’s mouth dropped open
...
Josh Richter respected
somethingI had said? Are youkidding me?
But he looked perfectly serious
...
He looked the way he had that
day at Bigelows, like he could see into my soul with those electric blue eyes of his
...
I guess Lana didn’t notice her boyfriend looking into my soul, though
...
You drink more’n anybody else in this wholeschool
...
He said, without
smiling, “Well, maybe I should quit, then
...
She said, “Oh, right! That’ll happen!”
Josh didn’t laugh, though
...
That’s when I started to get the heebie-jeebies
...
I was
glad he wasn’t staring atme like that; those blue eyes of his are no joke
...
Tina, seeing what I was doing, did the same
...
”
Then we booked out of there
...
But I know one thing for sure:
For once, I’m kind of glad I’m not Lana Weinberger
...
He was sort of leaning on his closed locker door, looking around
...
”
And then he smiled
...
His perfectly
straight white teeth
...
I said, “Hey,” back
...
I figured he was probably waiting for her, and
that the two of them would make up and probably French kiss all over the place, so I
tried to work my combination as quickly as possible and get the heck out of there so I
wouldn’t have to watch
...
He said, “I really agree with what you said in the caf
just now
...
I think that’s really, you
know, a cool attitude
...
It was sort of like I was on fire
...
It’s too bad my hair is so
short now
...
“Huh,” I said,
real intelligently
...
It went skittering across the hall
...
“Um,” I said, by way of answering his question
...
Then Josh’s
face was right next to mine
...
“Thanks,” I said
...
“No,” I said, real faintly, because that’s how his eyes made me feel: faint
...
”
Then the bell rang
...
” And then he left
...
Josh Richterspoke to me
...
Twice
...
I don’t
care that my mom is dating one of my teachers
...
I don’t even care that my best friend and I aren’t speaking
...
HOMEWORK
Algebra: ??? Can’t remember!!! English: ??? Ask Shameeka World Civ: ??? Ask
Lilly
...
Can’t ask Lilly
...
G & T: none French: ???
Biology: ???
God, just because a boy might like me, I completely lose my head
...
Thursday Night
Grandmère says: “Well, of course the boy likes you
...
”
Geez, Grandmère, thanks
...
I think I sort of hate her
...
I know it’s wrong to hate people, but I really do sort of hate my
grandmother
...
I mean, besides the fact that she’s totally
vain and thinks only about herself, she’s also kind of mean to people
...
Only there wasn’t
a whole lot of press around when we went outside, just some kid reporter fromTiger
Beat, or something
...
(Plus it’s no fun for the press to stalk you when you’re ready for them
...
This is how they get their kicks, at least as
far as I can figure out
...
But then as I was getting into the car Hans had brought around, Grandmère said,
“Wait one moment,” and went back inside
...
But then, when we pulled up in front of the restaurant, which was the Four
Seasons, there were all these reporters there! At first I thought somebody important had
to be inside, like Shaquille O’Neal or Madonna, but then they all started taking pictures
of me and yelling “Princess Amelia, how does it feel to grow up in a single-parent
household, then find out your mom’s ex has three hundred million dollars?” and
“Princess, what kind of running shoes do you wear?”
I totally forgot my whole fear of confrontation thing
...
I turned to
Grandmère in the car, and I said, “How did they know we were coming here?”
Grandmère just dug around in her purse for her cigarettes
...
“You called them, didn’t you?” I was so mad, I could hardly even see straight
...
”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Grandmère said
...
”
“You didn’t have to
...
Grandmère,why?”
Grandmère lit her cigarette
...
“This is an
important part of being a royal, Amelia,” she said between puffs
...
Why are you taking on so?”
“You’re the one who told all that stuff to Carol Fernandez
...
“Of course I did,” Grandmère said, with a kind ofSo, what? shrug
...
“How could you?”
She looked totally taken aback
...
”
“Seriously,” I yelled
...
Gianini did it! He and Mom had this totally
big fight about it
...
“Phillipe,” she said, “always
was incredibly naïve
...
I’m telling him the truth
...
“Seriously,” I said
...
He’s going to be really mad at you,
Grandmère
...
You needed the practice, darling
...
Soon you’ll be on the cover ofVogue, and then—”
“Grandmère!” I yelled
...
“Well, all right, darling, all right
...
”
I don’t know how much of that sank in, but after dinner I noticed the reporters had
all gone home
...
When I got home, Mr
...
I had to go into my room to call
my dad
...
Gianini, who told Carol Fernandez
everything,” and he said, “I know,” in this miserable way
...
“Youknow, and you haven’t said anything?”
He went, “Mia, your grandmother and I have a very complicated relationship
...
I guess I can’t really blame him, considering the fact
that she used to lock him in the dungeon and everything
...
Gianini
...
”
So I said, “Well? Are you going to?”
And he said, “Mia
...
I figured I’d done
enough good deeds for one day, and hung up
...
Gianini helped me with my homework
...
I guess I can sort of see how my mom likes Mr
...
He’s okay to just hang out with,
you know, like in front of the TV
...
And he doesn’t seem to care about sports at all
...
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
...
Friday, October 17, English
OH MY GOD!!!
JOSH AND LANA BROKE UP!!!!
I am not even kidding
...
Josh broke up with her last night after
crew practice
...
Lana wasn’t hanging around Josh’s locker this morning, like usual
...
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
...
Josh Richter”from where she’d written it all over her book covers
...
I could hardly factor my integers, I was so distracted
...
A size 36 double D 2
...
A member of a world-famous rock band 4
...
Josh Richter’s new girlfriend
More Friday
You will not even believe what just happened
...
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 felt really
sick, but in a good way
...
not:
Somehow, I managed to stammer out, “Uh, no one,” and he goes, and I kid you
“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 could only stand there and look up at him
...
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
...
That’s what I thought, for just a second
...
It could happen
...
That might be fun
...
But I barely heard him
...
Josh Richter just asked YOU out
...
Because it had happened
...
He had looked into my
soul, and had seen the real me, the one beneath the flat chest
...
Then the bell rang, and Josh went away, and I just kept standing there until Lars
poked me in the arm
...
Iknow he’s not my personal secretary
...
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
...
Get a dress 2
...
Get nails redone (stop biting fake ones off)
Friday, G & T
Okay, so I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is
...
Then, when she finally does deign to speak to me, it’s only to criticize me some
more
...
Boris Pelkowski
...
Lilly goes: “Well, at least I know Boris isn’t on the rebound
...
Josh Richter isnot on the rebound
...
Lilly goes: “Plus Boris doesn’t dodrugs
...
I asked her if she’d everseen Josh do drugs, and she
looked at me all sarcastically
...
He definitely
hangs out with people who do drugs, but hey, Tina Hakim Baba hangs out with a
princess, and that doesn’t makeher one
...
She went: “You’re overrationalizing
...
”
I amnot worried
...
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
...
It was
just sostrange
...
They
just talked to each other
...
Especially since Lana kept trying so hard not to look over at our table
...
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
...
Actually, Tina’s almost
more excited than I am
...
“Tavern on the Green
...
”
I suppose superartsy Boris is takingher somewhere in the Village
...
” And the two of them looked at each other in that
infuriating way guys look at each other sometimes, like they have this secret
...
Or maybe a cartoon or something
...
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
...
But not bad enough not to go
...
Be nicer to everyone, even Lana Weinberger
...
Never ever bite my fingernails,
even the fake ones
...
Write faithfully in this journal every day
...
Stop watching
oldBaywatch reruns and use my time wisely, like to study Algebra, or maybe improve the
environment, or something
...
Grandmère had pretty much gotten over my yelling at her yesterday about the
press
...
She got on the phone with Chanel and set up an
appointment for tomorrow to pick something out
...
It will be my first formal event as a
representative of Genovia, and I have to “sparkle” (her word, not mine)
...
But
Grandmère went ape anyway, and kept on worrying there wouldn’t be time to dye shoes
to match my gown
...
Like having your shoes
match your gown
...
But Tina Hakim Baba sure knows
...
She must have every
women’s magazine ever printed
...
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
...
They have a maid, a cook, a
nanny, and a driver, all of whom live in
...
Tina’s room has its own 37-inch TV with a Sony PlayStation
...
Some people have all the luck
...
At home, she’s totally
bubbly and outgoing
...
Mr
...
He had a heart attack last year and isn’t allowed to eat practically anything but
vegetables and rice
...
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
...
We had couscous and vegetable goulash
...
Mrs
...
Mrs
...
I think she’s pretty bored, living here in America and
not having a job and all
...
Hakim Baba used to be a model, but she quit when she
got married
...
She once stayed in the same hotel as Prince Charles and
Princess Diana
...
And that was on their
honeymoon!
No wonder things didn’t work out between them
...
Hakim Baba is as tall as me, which makes her about five inches taller than
Mr
...
But I don’t think Mr
...
Tina’s little sisters and brother are really cute
...
They looked pretty funny
...
I thought it was cute, but Mr
...
Hakim Baba didn’t think so
...
Then Tina showed me her dress for tomorrow
...
It’s so pretty,
like sea foam
...
Then it was time forLilly Tells It Like It Is, which comes on on Friday nights at
nine
...
It was
filmed before Lilly called off the boycott due to lack of interest
...
IfLilly Tells It Like It Is ever went network, I bet it would
be as highly rated as60 Minutes
...
She sat on her bed and said that racism is a powerful
force of evil that all of us must work to combat
...
Lilly went on to say that because of her daring stand against the Hos there
was a little bit more justice on the side of right today
...
Tina is a
fun friend and everything, but I’ve known Lilly since kindergarten
...
We stayed up really late reading Tina’s teenage love novels
...
Usually he waited a tactful amount of time, like a summer or at
least a weekend, before asking her out
...
But then Tina said even though she loves reading those books, she never takes
them as a guide to real life
...
Tina’s turning out the light now, because she’s tired
...
It’s been a long day
...
He hadn’t
...
Gianini was there, though (of course)
...
When he heard me ask my mom if a boy named Josh had called, he was all, “You don’t
mean Josh Richter, do you?”
I got kind of mad, because he sounded
...
Shocked or something
...
He and I are going to the Cultural Diversity
Dance tonight
...
Gianini raised his eyebrows
...
I went,
“They broke up
...
She went, “Who’s Josh Richter?”
And I went, “Only the cutest, most sensitive boy in school
...
Gianini snorted and said, “Well, most popular, anyway
...
When your own mother knows it’s
weird for the cutest, most popular boy in school to ask you to the dance, you know
you’re in trouble
...
“I don’t like this,” Mr
...
And when my mom asked him why, he said,
“Because I know Josh Richter
...
I don’t like the sound of that,” and before I could say
anything in Josh’s defense, Mr
...
At least it didn’t until my mom pointed out that since I’m only going five miles per
hour (FIVE!) she was going to have to consult my father “about this
...
Gianini translated
...
You shouldn’t be going out with seniors anyway
...
They were planning out the rest of my life for me (no dating until I’m eighteen, all-girls
dorm when I get to college, etc
...
G went to
answer it
...
Who isthis?”
Across the room, my mom nearly dropped the phone
...
Grandmère had come to the loft!
I never in my life thought I’d be grateful to Grandmère for something
...
But when she showed up at the loft to take me shopping
for my dress, I could have kissed her—on both cheeks, even—I really could have
...
I forgot Mr
...
All I could think about was the fact that my parents were trying to low-ball
me about Josh
...
And boy, did she ever
...
Gianini a very dirty look—“This ishe?”
she stopped long enough to ask, and when I said yes, she made this sniffing sound and
walked right by him—and heard Dad on the speakerphone
...
“Mother?” my dad’s voice shouted over the speakerphone
...
“Is that you? What areyou doing there?”
For someone who claims to have no use for modern technology, Grandmère sure
knew how to work that speakerphone
...
“Your daughter is
going to the dance with her beau
...
Only since she said it all
in French, only my dad and I understood
...
Gianini just stood there
...
Mr
...
After my grandmother had finished telling my dad just where he could get off, she
slammed the phone down, then looked around the loft
...
warehouse?”
Well, if she had lit a firecracker under my mom, she couldn’t have made her
madder
...
“Don’t you dare try to tell me how to raise my child! Phillipe and I have already decided
she isn’t going out with this boy
...
”
I went
...
Gianini was
looking at the floor
...
Once we were outside, I was so excited I could hardly stand it
...
“What’d yousay to them? What’d you say to convince them to let me go?”
But Grandmère just laughed in this scary way and said, “I have my ways
...
More Saturday
Well, I’m sitting here in my new dress, my new shoes, my new nails, and my new
panty hose, with my newly waxed legs and underarms, my newly touched-up hair, my
professionally made-up face, and it’s seven o’clock, and there’s no sign of Josh, and I’m
wondering if maybe this whole thing was a joke, like in the movieCarrie, which is too
scary for me to watch but Michael Moscovitz rented it once, and then he told Lilly and
me what it was about: This homely girl gets asked to a dance by the most popular boy in
school just so he and his popular friends can pour pig blood on her
...
The problem is, of course, I don’t have psychic powers, so if it turns out that Josh
and his friends pour pig blood on me I won’t be able to kill them all
...
But that would be difficult, since
Genovia doesn’t have an air force or navy, so how would the guards get here? They’d
have to fly commercially, and it costs A LOT to buy tickets at the last minute
...
But if Josh Richter stands me up, I can assure you, I willnot have a frivolous
reaction
...
Okay? And if you think that doesn’t hurt, think
about having your UNDERARMS waxed, which I also had done for him
...
I practically started to cry, it hurt so bad
...
I know my dad thinks Josh has stood me up
...
But I see him sneaking peeks at his watch all the
time
...
Only she never wears a watch, so she keeps sneaking peeks at the
blinking-eye cat clock on the wall
...
He isn’t checking the clock, though
...
I suppose my dad told him to
shoot Josh if he makes a move on me
...
My dad said I can go out with Josh, but only if Lars goes, too
...
But I pretended to be all mad
about it so my dad wouldn’t think I was getting off too easy
...
She told me while I was being fitted for my dress that my dad
has always had a problem with commitment and that the reason he doesn’t want me to
go out with Josh is that he can’t stand to see me dumped the way my dad has dumped
countless models all over the world
...
Josh can’t dump me
...
And if he doesn’t show up soon, well, all I can say is HIS LOSS
...
Old Coco Chanel really outdid herself; my
dress is HOT, pale, pale blue silk, all scrunched up on top like an accordion, so my
being flat-chested doesn’t even show, then straight and skinny the rest of the way down,
all the way to my matching pale, pale blue silk high heels
...
Icicles arein
...
I
should have got one of those masking tape roller thingies last time I was at Rite Aid, but
I forgot
...
I picked up all my socks, just in case he got it into his head to punish me or
something by eating one
...
Seven-fifteen
...
”
I tried to remain calm
...
“I’m sure,” my dad
...
“Well, Mia, we can still
make it toBeauty and the Beast, if you want to go
...
“I am NOT going toBeauty and the Beast with you
tonight
...
“But you used to loveBeauty and the Beast
...
It’s him
...
The
other stipulation, before my dad would let me go, is that besides Lars going, Josh has to
meet both my parents—and probably submit proof of ID, though I’m not sure Dad’s
thought of that yet
...
Oh my God, my hands are sweating so hard! I should have listened when
Grandmère suggested those elbow-length gloves—
Saturday Night, Ladies’ Room,
Tavern on the Green
Okay, so I lied
...
I made Lars carry it
...
I know it’s filled with
silencers and grenades and stuff, but I knew he could fit one measly journal into it
...
So I’m in the bathroom at the Tavern on the Green
...
There isn’t a little stool to sit on in my stall, so I’m sitting
on the toilet with the lid down
...
There are a whole lot of fat ladies here, mostly for this wedding between a
very Italian-looking dark-haired girl who needs a good eyebrow waxing and a skinny
redheaded boy named Fergus
...
I am not kidding
...
This dress is the BOMB!
Dinner’s not so great as I thought it would be, though
...
It’s Josh
...
He looks totally hot in his tux
...
Last
year, he escorted his girlfriend before Lana to all the debutante events in the city, his
girlfriend before Lana having been related to the guy who invented those plastic bags
you put vegetables in when you go to the grocery store
...
Those two little words earned the guy half a billion dollars, Josh says
...
Am I supposed to be impressed by something his
ex-girlfriend’s dad did? He isn’t acting very sensitive, to tell you the truth
...
He came in, gave me a corsage (tiny
white roses tied together with pink ribbon, totally gorgeous; it must have cost him ten
dollarsat least —I couldn’t help thinking, though, that he’d originally picked it out for
another girl, with a different color dress), and shook my dad’s hand
...
She can be so embarrassing sometimes
...
She BLUSHED as he was shaking her hand
...
Then my dad cleared his throat and started asking Josh a whole lot of questions
about what kind of car he was driving (his dad’s BMW), where we’re going (duh), and
what time we would be back (in time for breakfast, Josh said)
...
Of course,
considering that Lars was going to be there, and there wasn’t anything that could
actually happen to me, it was kind of bogus that I couldn’t stay out as late as I wanted,
but Grandmère told me a princess should always be prepared to compromise, so I didn’t
say anything
...
Josh and Lars and I went down to Josh’s dad’s car, and Josh held the door to the
front seat open for me, and then Lars said why didn’t he drive so Josh and I could sit in
the back and get to know each other
...
I mean, Josh was
like, “You look really nice in that dress,” and I said I liked his tux and thanked him for
my corsage
...
I am not even kidding
...
I mean, Michael Moscovitz practically never shuts up
...
I thought about asking him who he’d rather spend
eternity with if it was the end of the world and he had to choose, Winona Ryder or
Nicole Kidman, but I didn’t feel like I knew him well enough
...
Gianini
...
Maybe not as fast as my being
a princess, but it had gotten around, all right
...
But then for some reason I couldn’t tell him about seeing Mr
...
It just didn’t seem
...
I just couldn’t tell him
...
But I
couldn’t tell Josh, even though he had looked into my soul and everything
...
I mean, I’d sort of been dreading sitting there for another hour or so
with nothing to say
...
I have to say, everyone has been pretty nice
...
They’re all much older than me—some of them are seniors—so they’re pretty
mature
...
But then, if Lana were here I wouldn’t be
...
The table’s been through
three bottles already, and Josh just keeps ordering more, since his dad gave him his
platinum American Express card for the occasion
...
Can’t the waiters
tell he’s only eighteen and that most of his guests are even younger than that?
And how can Josh sit there and drink so much? What if Lars hadn’t been here to
drive? Josh would be driving his dad’s BMW half sloshed
...
I guess that’s very nice and all, but I won’t eat meat, not even for
the most sensitive boy in the world
...
Maybe I could sneak out of here and get Lars to pick up a veggie wrap for me from
Emerald Planet
...
Like he keeps on putting his hand on my leg under the table
...
The last time, he squeezed!
I don’t think he’s drunk, exactly, but he’s certainly friendlier than he was in the car
on the way up
...
Well, I guess I should go back out there
...
Then maybe I could have invited Tina Hakim Baba and her date—
or even Lilly and Boris
...
Oh, well
...
Later Saturday Night, Girls’ Room,
Albert Einstein High School
Why?
Why??
Why???
I can’t even believe this is happening
...
Because I am definitely under duress
...
In through my nose, out through my mouth
...
I mean, who does he think he is? Do
you know what he did? Do you know what he did? Well, let me tell you what he did
...
Oh, gee, let me see,
the dance had only started an HOUR earlier
...
So we go and wait for the valet to bring the car around, and I was thinking maybe
everything would be all right, since while we were waiting Josh had his arm around my
shoulders, which was really nice, since my dress is sleeveless, and even though I have a
wrap it’s just this shimmery see-through veil thing
...
It’s a nice arm, really, very muscular from all that rowing
...
No, I think Josh must have taken a bath in Drakkar Noir,
which in large doses actually smells pretty vile
...
In
spite of that, I’m thinking, okay, things aren’t so bad
...
We’ll go to the dance and he’ll
look into my soul again with those electric blue eyes and everything will be all right
...
First of all, we can barely pull up to the school, there’s so much traffic
...
Yes, it was Saturday night, but there shouldn’t be THAT much
traffic in front of Albert Einstein’s, right? I mean, it’s just a school dance
...
And then I realize why there’s so much congestion
...
They’re shining these big bright lights all over the steps to Albert
Einstein’s
...
Waiting for what?
Waiting for me, it turns out
...
But you could tell they were swear words by his voice
...
I really don’t
...
I laid it on the line for Grandmère
...
Grandmère would not, I’m sure, EVER call
the press on me again, without my permission
...
He
goes, “So what? You ought to be used to it by now
...
Let me tell you how used to it I am by now
...
“Come on,” Josh said
...
”
Lars totally did not like that idea
...
You will park the car, and
the princess andI will make a run for it
...
He had hold of my hand
...
You only live once,” and started dragging me out of the car
...
That’s right
...
Because his hand felt so nice over
mine, so big and protective, so warm and secure, I thought, Oh, what could happen? So
a bunch of flashbulbs will go off
...
Everything will be fine
...
You park the car
...
”
Lars said, “No, Princess, wait—”
Which were the last words I heard out of him—for a while, anyway—since by that
time Josh and I were out of the car and he had slammed the door shut behind us
...
Flashbulbs were going off everywhere, blinding me, so
that all I could see were the steps underneath us as we ran up them
...
I was completely dependent
on Josh to lead the way, since I couldn’t see a blessed thing
...
I thought we’d stopped because Josh was opening the doors for me
...
I could see the doors
...
Below us, on the stairs, the reporters were screaming questions and taking pictures
...
And so I just stood there, like a complete IDIOT, waiting for Josh to open the
doors, instead of doing the smart thing, which was open the doors myself and get inside
where it was safe, where there weren’t any cameras or reporters or people yelling “Kiss
her, Kiss her!”
And then, I don’t know how, the next thing I knew Josh had put his arm around
me again, dragged me to him, and smashed his mouth against mine
...
He just smashed his mouth up against mine,
and all these flashes started going off, but believe me, it wasn’t like in those books Tina
is always reading, where the boy kisses the girl and she sees like fireworks and stuff
behind her eyelids
...
EVERYONE was taking a picture of Princess Mia getting
her first kiss
...
Like it wasn’t bad enough that this was my first kiss
...
And another thing about those books Tina reads: In those books, when the girl gets
her first kiss, she gets this warm gushy feeling inside
...
I didn’t get that feeling
...
All I got was embarrassed
...
All it felt, really, was strange
...
And you would think that after I’d spent so much time thinking
this guy was the greatest thing on earth I’d have felt SOMETHING when he kissed me
...
And like our car ride to the restaurant, I just kept wishing it would end
...
Should I move my head around? What am I
going to do if he tries to stick his tongue in there, like I used to see him do to Lana? I
can’t letTeen People take a picture of me with some guy’s tongue in my mouth; my dad
will kill me
...
Where, I swear to God, every single person I knew was standing, looking at us
...
There were Tina and her date from Trinity, Dave, looking at me
in a sort of shocked way
...
In fact, he almost looked handsome, in a
geeky, musical genius kind of way
...
And there were Shameeka and Ling Su with their
dates, and a bunch of other people I probably knew but didn’t recognize out of their
school uniforms, all looking at me with the same sort of expression Tina was wearing,
one of total and complete astonishment
...
G, standing by the ticket booth in front of the doors to the
cafeteria, where the dance was being held, looking more astonished than anybody
...
I would have to say, out of everybody there, I was the person in
the most shock
...
JOSH RICHTER had just
KISSED me
...
Did I mention that he’d kissed me ON THE LIPS?
Oh, and that he did it in front of reporters fromTEEN PEOPLE?
So I’m standing there, and everybody is looking at me, and I could still hear the
reporters yelling outside, and inside the cafeteria I could hear thethump, thump, thump
of the sound system as it ground out some hip-hop, a tribute to our Latino student
population, and these thoughts are moving really sluggishly through my head, these
thoughts that are saying:
He set you up
...
He’s the one who notified the press that you’d be here tonight
...
He never even noticed you until your picture
was on the cover of thePost
...
He probably thinks his
chances of getting into Harvard or whatever are way enhanced by the fact that he’s the
princess of Genovia’s boyfriend
...
Great
...
Lilly says I’m not assertive enough
...
My mom says the same thing
...
If it hadn’t turned out that I’m a princess, maybe I might still be all that stuff
...
I probably wouldn’t have
done what I did next
...
“Do what?”
“Kiss me like that, in front of everybody
...
“I don’t know,” he said
...
So I did
...
”
“You didn’t appreciate it?” Josh looked confused
...
“That’s exactly what I mean
...
I didn’t like it at all
...
You just kissed me because I’m
the princess of Genovia
...
“That’s crazy,” he said
...
I like you a lot
...
You don’t evenknow me
...
So you could get to know me better
...
You just wanted to get your picture onExtra
...
”
“No, you don’t
...
”
I heard a murmur go around through all of my friends
...
He heard them, too, so when he replied,
he was talking to them, too
...
“That’s a crime? It wasfilet mignon, for God’s sake
...
”
This information didn’t seem to bother Josh very much
...
”
Then he turned to me and said, “Ready to slide?”
But I had no intention of sliding with Josh
...
I couldn’t believe, after what I’d just said to him, he thought I’d
stillwant to
...
How could I ever have thought he’d seen
into my soul? How???
Disgusted, I did the only thing a girl can be expected to do under those
circumstances:
I turned my back on him and walked out
...
It finally registered on Josh that I was ditching him
...
“It wasn’t just a kiss,” I said
...
“Maybe
that’s how you wanted it to look, like it was just a kiss
...
And one that you’ve been planning since you saw me in
thePost
...
I don’t needyou
...
Which is where I am now, writing this
...
Probably even
some international magazines will pick it up, likeMajesty magazine, which follows the
lives of all the young royals in Great Britain and Monaco
...
They called it “Out of the Closet
...
I wonder what the caption under the picture of me and Josh will be
...
And the kicker of it all is that I am totally NOT in love with Josh Richter
...
Sometimes I think there really is something wrong with me, that I don’t have
one
...
Of course, now that everyone knows I’m a princess, it’s going to be kind of hard to
tell which guys like me for me and which guys like me for my tiara
...
How could I have ever liked him? He’s such a user
...
And I played right into his hands like
the stupid sap that I am
...
There is no way I will ever be able to explain that it wasn’t my fault
...
But probably not
...
Uh-oh
...
Somebody is talking to me
...
Tina wants to know if I’m all right
...
Oh my God, I recognize those feet! It’s Lilly! Lilly and Tina both want to know if
I’m all right!
Lilly is actually speaking to me again
...
She is actually speaking to me in a friendly manner
...
Wow! Lilly is admitting she did something wrong! I can’t believe it! I CAN’T
BELIEVE IT!
She and Tina want me to come out and hang out with them
...
It would be too awkward, all of them with dates and me by myself like a big
dope
...
Michael’s here
...
”
Michael Moscovitz came to a school event??? I can’t believe it!! He never goes
anywhere, except to like lectures in quantum physics and stuff!!
I have got to see this for myself
...
More later
...
In my dream, Lilly and I weren’t fighting anymore; she and Tina had become
friends; Boris Pelkowski actually turned out to be not so bad when you got him away
from his violin; Mr
...
But it wasn’t a dream
...
I mean it
...
And I don’t even care! Pavlov can drool all over me if he wants to! I have my best
friend back! I’m not going to flunk out of ninth grade! My dad isn’t going to kill me for
kissing Josh Richter!
Oh, and I think Michael Moscovitz might like me!
I can hardly write for happiness
...
I was morbidly depressed—yes,morbidly
...
But when I came out of the girls’ room, Josh was gone
...
Lilly isn’t sure what happened after
that, because Mr
...
He didn’t move
all night, either, but I just thought that was because of all the champagne he’d had to
drink
...
It was the Pakistani table, with a display
sponsored by the Economics Club, detailing how the market for maunds (a Pakistani
unit of measurement) of rice was falling
...
And then Michael suddenly appeared out of nowhere, looking crescent fresh—isn’t
that a funny expression? I learned it from Michael—in the tux his mom made him get
for his cousin Steve’s bar mitzvah
...
But Michael didn’t seem to care what the Computer Club thought, and he’s the
treasurer! He sat down next to me and asked if I was all right, and then we had fun for
a while CracKing jokes about how all the cheerleaders sure don’t practice any cultural
diversity, since they were all dressed in practically the same gown, a slinky black
number by Donna Karan
...
And we were all getting kind of grossed out
when the music changed, and a slow song came on, and everybody left the table to go
and dance
...
We just sat there amid the maunds of rice
...
We kept on arguing about the replicator, and then we
moved on to who was the more effective leader, Captain Kirk or Captain Picard, when
Mr
...
I said of course, and that was when Mr
...
But I credited my improved math performance to Michael, who taught me to stop
writing my Algebra notes in my journal, not be so messy with my columns, and to cross
things out when I borrow during subtraction
...
G didn’t hear him since he had to hurry
off and dissuade a group of Goths from embarking upon a demonstration over the
unfair exclusion of a table dedicated to Satan worshipers by the event organizers
...
Lilly asked if I’d mind being the topic for
next week’s show, titled “The New Monarchy: Royals Who Make a Difference
...
Then another slow song came on, and everybody went to go and dance to it
...
And then the next
thing I knew, I was dancing my first dance with a boy who wasn’t my dad!
And it was aslow one!
Slow dancing isstrange
...
It’s more like standing there
with your arms around the other person, moving from one foot to the other in time to
the music
...
I guess I could sort of see why, since you’re so busyfeeling stuff it’s hard to
think of anything to say
...
I guess Michael felt the same way, because even though when we were sitting there
on the table with all the rice neither of us ever shut up, we had so much to talk about,
when we were dancing together neither of us said a word
...
For somebody who’d never been to a single school
event—aside from Computer Club meetings—Michael sure was making up for lost time
in his enthusiasm over being at this one
...
And you know, to tell the truth, I couldn’t say which I liked better, talking to
Michael or dancing with him
...
interesting
...
When the dance was over we all piled into the limo Mr
...
I called my mom
on the limo cell phone and told her where I was and asked if I could spend the night at
Lilly’s, since that’s where we were all headed
...
G and that he’d filled
her in on the night’s events
...
You know, he could have given me a D plus
...
That kind of loyalty ought to be rewarded
...
and Dr
...
They were especially surprised to see
Michael; they hadn’t realized he’d left his room
...
Everybody said good-bye and piled into the elevator, except for me and the
Moscovitzes
...
I made him promise not to tell my dad about
the kiss
...
The strangest thing out of everything that happened last night is that I found out
what Michael does in his room all the time
...
I probably shouldn’t even write it down here, in case
someone ever finds this book and reads it
...
And to think, he’s never had one lesson! He taught himself how to play the guitar
—and he writes all his own songs! The one he played for me is called “Tall Drink of
Water
...
I predict that one day it will be number one on theBillboard chart
...
It wasn’t until everyone was gone that I realized how tired I was
...
I had broken up with a boy I had only been out on half a date with
...
Still, I woke up way early, like I always do when I spend the night at Lilly’s
...
As I lay there, I thought, Really, I am a very lucky girl
...
But isn’t it funny how everything kind of works itself
out in the end?
I hear stirrings in the kitchen
...
I’m going to go see if she needs any help
...
Dad wanted to find out
how things went at the dance
...
And
Grandmère wanted to let me know that she has to go away for a week, so our princess
lessons are suspended for the time being
...
I suppose he’s friends with that other guy she used to
hang around with, Boutros-Boutros Something-or-other
...
Anyway, she and Dad just showed up out of the blue, and you should have seen my
mom’s face
...
Especially when Grandmère started
bossing her around about how messy the loft is (I’ve been too busy lately to clean)
...
Anyway, while we were standing on the corner saying good-bye until next week
(YES!No princess lessons for a whole week! She shoots; she scores!) the Blind Guy
walked by, tapping his cane
...
Grandmère saw this and totally
fell for it
...
”
But, of course, I knew better
...
”
“Amelia!” Grandmère was shocked
...
Now, go and help that young man cross the street
...
If you think he needs help so much,you do it
...
”
The Blind Guy grabbed Grandmère by the arm
...
I didn’t think the Blind Guy was going to try to feel up my grandmother
...
I mean, Grandmère is no spring chicken, if
you know what I mean
...
But next thing I knew, Grandmère was yelling her head off, and both her driver
and our neighbor who used to be a man came running out to help her
...
She whacked the Blind Guy across the face
with her purse so hard his sunglasses went flying off
...
And let me tell you something: I don’t think he’ll be taking any more trips down
our street for a while
...
I needed some peace and quiet
...
She is still waiting for her real
parents, the king and queen, to come and restore her to her rightful throne
...
Visit Meg’s website at: www
...
com
About this Title
This eBook was created using ReaderWorks®Publisher 2
...
For more information about ReaderWorks, please visit us on the Web
atwww
...
com/readerworks
Title: The Princess diaries
Description: This book including a plethora of interesting English words for students will surely a perfect document for them to improve their language skills as well as learn much vocabulary.
Description: This book including a plethora of interesting English words for students will surely a perfect document for them to improve their language skills as well as learn much vocabulary.