The Princess Diaries Read online

  Stop waiting for the phone to ring (Lilly is NOT going to call; neither is Josh Richter)

  Make more friends

  Have more self-confidence

  Stop biting my fake fingernails

  Start acting more: Responsible

  Adult

  Mature

  Be happier

  Achieve self-actualization

  Buy: trash bags

  napkins

  conditioner

  tuna

  toilet paper!!!!

  More Tuesday, Algebra

  Oh my God. I can’t even believe this. But it must be true, since Shameeka just told me.

  Lilly has a date to the Cultural Diversity Dance this weekend.

  Lilly has a date. Even Lilly has a date. I thought all the boys in our school were terrified of Lilly.

  But there’s one boy who’s not:

  Boris Pelkowski.

  AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

  More Tuesday, English

  No boy will ever ask me out. Ever. EVERYONE has a date to the Cultural Diversity Dance: Shameeka, Lilly, Ling Su, Tina Hakim Baba. I’m the only one not going. The ONLY ONE.

  Why was I born under such an unlucky star? Why did I 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.

  ANYTHING.

  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. I was surprised he’d heard about it. He said it was all over school, about how I’d decimated Lana in front of Josh. He said, “Your locker is right next to Josh’s, isn’t it?”

  I said yes it was.

  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.

  I asked him if Lilly was still saying mean things about me, and he said, all taken aback, “She’s never said mean things about you. She just doesn’t understand why you blew up at her like that.”

  I said, “Michael, she’s always putting me down! I just couldn’t take it anymore. I have too many other problems without having friends who aren’t supportive of me.”

  He laughed. “What kind of problems could you have?”

  Like I was too much of a kid or something to have problems!

  Boy, did I straighten him out. I couldn’t exactly tell him about being the princess of Genovia, or about not having any breasts or anything, but I did remind him that I’m flunking Algebra, I have detention for a week, and I had recently woken up to find Mr. Gianini in his boxer shorts eating breakfast with my mom.

  He said he guessed I did have some problems after all.

  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. So I guess because I’m fighting with her I’m not allowed to be friends with her brother.

  Or maybe she’s just sore because her boycott of Ho’s Deli is creating serious turmoil within the school. First of all, all the Asian kids have started doing their shopping exclusively at Ho’s. And why not? Because of Lilly’s campaign, now they know they can get a five-cent discount on just about anything. The other problem is that there is no other deli within walking distance. This has caused some serious division within the ranks of the protesters. The nonsmokers want to continue the boycott, but the smokers are all for writing the Hos a stern letter and then forgetting about it. And since all the popular kids in school smoke, they aren’t honoring the boycott at all. They’re going to Ho’s just like they always did to get their Camel Lights.

  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. I mean, where would all those starving kids be without Sally Struthers?

  Anyway, then Michael asked me a strange question. He went, “So, are you grounded?”

  I looked at him kind of funny. “You mean for getting detention? No, of course not. My mom is totally on my side. My dad wants to sue the school.”

  Michael said, “Oh. Well, I was wondering because, if you aren’t busy Saturday, I thought maybe we could—”

  But then Mrs. Hill came in and made us all fill out questionnaires for the Ph.D. 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.

  Then the bell rang, and I ran out as fast as I could. I knew what Michael was going to ask me, see. He was going to suggest we meet to go over my long division, which he says is a human tragedy. And I just didn’t think I could take it. Math? On the weekend? After spending almost every waking moment on it all week?

  No, thank you.

  But I didn’t want to be rude, so I left before he could ask me. Was that terrible of me?

  Really, a girl can only take so much criticism on her remainders.

  ma mon tes

  ta ton tes

  sa son ses

  notre notre nos

  votre votre vos

  leur leur leurs

  HOMEWORK

  Algebra: pg. 121, 1–57 odd only

  English: ??? Ask Shameeka

  World Civ: questions at end of Chapter 9

  G & T: none

  French: pour demain, une vignette culturelle

  Biology: none

  Tuesday Night

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

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

  Being a princess is hard work.

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

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

  Wednesday, October 15, Homeroom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

  The most commonly asked question at Albert Einstein High School is “Do you have any gum?”

  Bees and bulls are attracted to the color red.

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

  I miss being best friends with Lilly Moscovitz.

  Later on Wednesday, Before Algebra

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

  I swear to God I am not making this up.

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

  Why is Josh Richter speaking to me?

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

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

  Then he walked away.

  It took me five minutes to stop hyperventilating.

  His eyes are so blue they hurt to look at.

  Wednesday, Principal Gupta’s Office

  It’s over.

  I’m dead.

  That’s it.

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

  My picture is on the cover of the Post.

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

  Oh, yeah. I’m dead.

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

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

  Great. Just great.

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

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

  My dad has obviously never met Principal Gupta.

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

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

  “It is,” Principal Gupta said, “a bit unbelievable.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  More Wednesday, English

  It isn’t fair.

  This is totally, completely unfair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  But these kids are brutal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I now have an armed escort.

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

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

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

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

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

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