The Princess Diaries Read online

  “The real truth?” my mom yelled. “The real truth, Phillipe, is that your mother is—”

  At this point, I decided it might be best to retire to my room. I put my headphones on so I wouldn’t have to listen to them fight. This is a trick I learned from watching kids on made-for-TV movies whose parents are divorcing. My favorite CD right now is the latest Britney Spears, which I know is really dorky, and I could never tell Lilly, but secretly I sort of want to be Britney Spears. Once I had a dream I was 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.

  Isn’t that an embarrassing thing to admit? The funny thing is, while I know I could never tell Lilly about that dream without her going all Freudian on me and telling me how the pink dress is a phallic symbol and being Britney signifies my low self-esteem or something, I know I could tell Tina Hakim Baba, and she would totally get into it and just want to know whether or not Josh was wearing leather pants.

  I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but it’s really hard to write with my new fake fingernails.

  The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether or not Grandmère really is the one who tipped off Carol Fernandez. I mean, when I went to my princess lesson today I was still crying, and Grandmère was totally unsympathetic about it. She was all, “And these tears are because . . . ?” 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.

  Only in life, I don’t think a whole lot of girls get their faces plastered across the cover of the Post, unless they’ve won the lottery or had sex with the president or something. I didn’t do anything except get born.

  I don’t think “that’s life” at all. I think that sucks, is what I think.

  Then Grandmère started talking about how she’d been fielding calls all day from representatives of the media, and how all these people want to interview me, like Leeza Gibbons and Barbara Walters and stuff, and she said I ought to have a press conference, and that she’d already talked to the Plaza people about it, and they’d set aside this special room with a podium and a pitcher of ice water and some potted palms and stuff.

  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. And at your friends’ houses, and at your grocery store, and at the place where you rent those movie videos you like so much.”

  Grandmère doesn’t believe in VCRs. She says if God meant for us to watch movies at home He wouldn’t have invented coming attractions.

  Then Grandmère wanted to know where my sense of civic duty was. She said it would greatly promote tourism in Genovia if I just went on Dateline.

  I really want to do what’s best for Genovia. I really do. But I also have to do what’s best for Mia Thermopolis. And going on Dateline would definitely not be good for me.

  But Grandmère seems really gung-ho on the whole promoting Genovia thing. So I sort of started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, my mom is right. Maybe Grandmère did talk to Carol Fernandez.

  But would Grandmère do something like that?

  Well. Yeah.

  I just lifted up my headphones. They’re still at it.

  Looks like it’s going to be a long night.

  Thursday, October 16, Homeroom

  Well, this morning my face was on the covers of the Daily News and New York Newsday. My picture was also in the Metro Section of The New York Times. 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. Gianini. 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.

  There were more reporters than ever in front of Albert Einstein when Hans pulled up in front of it this morning. I guess all the morning news shows needed something they could report live. Usually it’s an overturned chicken truck on the Palisades Parkway or a crackhead holding his wife and kids hostage in Queens. But today it was me.

  I had sort of anticipated that this might happen, and I was a little more prepared today than I was yesterday. 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.

  It was the same drill as the day before. Lars took me by the arm and the two of us sprinted through a sea of TV cameras and microphones into the school. As we ran, people shouted stuff at me like, “Amelia, do you intend to follow the example of Princess Diana and become the queen of people’s hearts?” and “Amelia, who do you like better, Leonardo di Caprio or Prince William?” and “Amelia, what are your feelings on the meat industry?”

  They almost got me on that one. I started to turn around, but Lars dragged me on into the school.

  HERE’S WHAT I NEED TO DO

  Think of some way to get Lilly to like me again

  Stop being such a wimp

  Stop lying

  and/or

  Think of better lies

  Stop being so dramatic

  Start being more Independent

  Self-reliant

  Mature

  Stop thinking about Josh Richter

  Stop thinking about Michael Moscovitz

  Get better grades

  Achieve self-actualization

  Thursday, Algebra

  Today in Algebra Mr. Gianini was totally trying to teach us about the Cartesian plane, but nobody could pay attention because of all the news vans outside. People kept jumping up to lean out the windows and yell at the reporters: “You killed Princess Di! Bring back Princess Di!”

  Mr. Gianini kept trying to bring people to order, but it was impossible. Lilly was getting all burned up because everyone was coming together against the reporters but no one had wanted to stand outside Ho’s Deli and do her chant, which was “We oppose the racist Hos.”

  That’s kind of harder to say than “You killed Princess Di! Bring back Princess Di!” so maybe that’s why. Lilly’s chant has too many big words.

  So then Mr. Gianini had to have a talk with us about whether the media was really to blame for killing Princess Diana, or if maybe it was the fact that the guy driving the car she was in might have been drunk. 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. Gianini said could we please come back to reality now.

  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. Gianini was like, could we please return to the Cartesian plane?


  Which is probably a safer plane to be on, if you think about it, than the one we live on, since there aren’t any reporters there.

  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. It’s supposed to protect them from the lustful eyes of men, but Tina says her cousins wear Gap jeans underneath their chadrahs, and as soon as there aren’t any adults around they take their chadrahs off and hang out with boys just like we do.

  Well, like we would do if any boys liked us.

  I take that back. I forgot that Tina has a boy to hang out with, her Cultural Diversity date, Dave Farouq El-Abar.

  Geez. What is wrong with me, anyway? How come no boys like me?

  So Tina was telling me all about chadrahs when all of a sudden Lana Weinberger set her tray down next to ours.

  I am not even kidding. Lana Weinberger.

  I, of course, thought she was going to whip out the receipt for the Nutty Royaled sweater’s dry cleaning or start shaking Tabasco sauce all over our salads or something, but instead she just went, all breezy, “You guys don’t mind if we join you, do you?”

  And then I saw this tray sliding over next to mine. 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. When I looked up to see who could possibly be ingesting that many saturated fats, I saw Josh Richter pulling out the chair next to mine.

  I am not even kidding. Josh Richter.

  He went, “Hey,” to me and sat down and started eating.

  I looked at Tina, and Tina looked at me, and then both of us looked at our bodyguards. But they were busy arguing over whether rubber-tipped bullets really did hurt rioters or if it was better just to use hoses.

  Tina and I looked back at Lana and Josh.

  Really attractive people, like Lana and Josh, don’t ever go anywhere alone. They always have this sort of entourage that follows them around. Lana’s entourage consists of a bunch of other girls, most of whom are junior varsity cheerleaders like she is. They are all really pretty, with long hair and breasts and stuff, like Lana.

  Josh’s entourage consists of a bunch of senior boys who are all on the crew team with him. They are all really large and handsome, and they were all eating excessive amounts of animal by-products, just like Josh.

  Josh’s entourage put their trays down beside Josh’s. Lana’s entourage put their trays beside Lana’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.

  I got a good look at Lilly, and her eyes were bugging out the way they do when she sees something she thinks would make a good episode of her show.

  “So,” Lana said, all chatty-like, while she picked at her salad—no dressing, and only water on the side. “What are you up to this weekend, Mia? Are you going to the Cultural Diversity Dance?”

  It was the first time she’d ever called me Mia and not Amelia.

  “Uh,” I said brilliantly. “Let me see . . . ”

  “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. You should come.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Well, I don’t—”

  “She should totally come,” Lana said, stabbing at a cherry tomato with her fork. “Shouldn’t she, Josh?”

  Josh was shoveling chili into his mouth using Doritos instead of a spoon. “Sure,” he said with his mouth full. “She should come.”

  “It’s going to be so cool,” Lana said. “Josh’s place is like great. It’s got six bedrooms. On Park Avenue. And there’s a Jacuzzi in the master bedroom. 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. “Hey, Richter, remember after the last dance? When Bonham-Allen passed out in your mom’s Jacuzzi? That was rad.”

  Lana giggled. “Oh, God! She chugged that whole bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Remember, Josh? She drank practically the whole thing herself—what a hog!—and then she wouldn’t stop throwing up.”

  “Major vomitage,” Pierce agreed.

  “She had to have her stomach pumped,” Lana said to Tina and me. “The paramedics said if Josh hadn’t phoned them when he did she’d have died.”

  We all turned to look at Josh. He said, modestly, “It was way uncool.”

  Lana stopped giggling. “It was,” she said, all solemn now that Josh Richter had declared the incident uncool.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to say about that, so I just said, “Wow.”

  “So,” Lana said. She ate a shred of lettuce and swished some water around in her mouth. “Are you coming, or not?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”

  A lot of Lana’s friends, who’d been talking among themselves, stopped talking and looked at me. Josh’s friends, however, went right on eating.

  “You can’t?” Lana said, making this very astonished face.

  “No,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  I thought about lying. I could have said something like, Lana, I can’t go because I have to have dinner with the prime minister of Iceland. I could have said, I can’t go because I have to go christen a cruise ship. There were all sorts of excuses I could have made up. But for once, for once in my stupid life, I went and told the truth.

  “I can’t go,” I said, “because my mom wouldn’t let me go to a party like that.”

  Oh, my God. Why did I say that? Why, why, why? I should have lied. I totally should have lied. Because how did I sound, saying something like that? Uh, like a total freak. Worse than a freak. A dork. A grade A nerd.

  I don’t know what compelled me to tell the truth in the first place. It wasn’t even the real truth. I mean, it was a truth, but it wasn’t the real reason I was saying no. I mean, it’s true there was no way my mom was going to let me go to a party in a boy’s apartment when his parents are out of town. Even with a bodyguard. But the real reason, of course, is that I wouldn’t know how to act at a party like that. I mean, I’ve heard about these kinds of parties. There are like whole rooms reserved for people to go into to make out. We’re talking major French kissing. Maybe even MORE than French kissing. Maybe even like above-the-waist touching. Maybe even below-the-waist touching. I don’t know for sure, because no one I know has ever been to one of those parties. No one I know is popular enough to get invited.

  Plus everybody drinks. But I don’t drink, and I don’t have anybody to make out with. So what would I do there?

  Lana looked at me, and then she looked at her friends, and then she burst out laughing. Loud. I mean, REALLY loud.

  Well, I guess I can’t really blame her.

  “Oh my God,” Lana said when she had gotten over laughing so hard that she couldn’t talk. “You can’t be serious.”

  I knew right then Lana had just latched upon a whole new thing to torture me about. 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. Suddenly, because of me, she was being sucked into the middle of the popular girl torture zone.

  “Oh my God,” Lana said. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Um,” I said. “No.”

  “Well, you’re not supposed to tell her the truth,” Lana said, all snotty again.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “Your mom. Nobody tells their mom the truth. You tell her you’re spending the night at
a girlfriend’s house. Duh.”

  Oh.

  She meant lie. To my mom. Lana had obviously never met my mom. Nobody lies to my mom. You just can’t. Not about something like that. No way.

  So I said, “Look, it’s not like I don’t appreciate being asked, and all, but I really don’t think I can come. Besides, I don’t even drink. . . . ”

  Okay, that was another big mistake.

  Lana looked at me like I’d just said I’d never watched Party of Five, or something. She went: “You don’t drink?”

  I just looked at her. The truth is, at Miragnac I do drink. We drink wine with dinner every night. That’s just what you do in France. You don’t drink it for fun, though. You drink it because it goes with the food. It’s supposed to make the foie gras taste better. 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.

  I certainly wouldn’t chug a whole bottle of it, though, not even on a dare. Not even for Josh Richter.

  So I just shrugged and went, “No. I try to be respectful of my body and not put a whole lot of toxins into it.”

  Lana snorted at that, but across from her—beside me—Josh Richter swallowed the mouthful of burger he was chewing and said, “I can respect that.”

  Lana’s mouth dropped open. So, I’m sorry to say, did mine. Josh Richter respected something I had said? Are you kidding me?

  But he looked perfectly serious. More than 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. . . . Like he already had seen into my soul. . . .

  I guess Lana didn’t notice her boyfriend looking into my soul, though. Because she said, “God, Josh. You drink more’n anybody else in this whole school.”

  Josh turned his head and looked at her with those hypnotic eyes. He said, without smiling, “Well, maybe I should quit, then.”

  Lana started laughing. She said, “Oh, right! That’ll happen!”