Princess in Waiting Read online

  And there, in front of the Moscovitzes’ black leather couch, which sat in front of their thirty-two inch Sony TV, sat two little folding tables. Michael lowered the plates of food he’d prepared onto them. They sat there, in the glow of the Star Wars title image, which was frozen on the TV screen, obviously paused there.

  “Michael,” I said, genuinely baffled. “What is this?”

  “Well, you couldn’t make it to the Screening Room,” he said, looking as if he couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t figured it out on my own yet. “So I brought the Screening Room to you. Come on, let’s eat. I’m starved.”

  He might have been starved, but I was stunned. I stood there looking down at the veggie burgers—which smelled divine—going, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You aren’t breaking up with me?”

  Michael had already sat down on the couch and stuffed a few fries in his mouth. When I said that, about breaking up, he turned around to look at me like I was demented. “Break up with you? Why would I do that?”

  “Well,” I said, starting to wonder if maybe he was right, and I reallywas demented. “When I told you I couldn’t make it tonight you… well, you seemed kind of distant—”

  “I wasn’t distant,” Michael said. “I was trying to figure out what we could do instead of, you know, going to the movie.”

  “But then you didn’t show up for lunch….”

  “Right,” Michael said. “I had to call and order the veggie burgers and beg Maya to go to the store and get the rest of the stuff. And my dad had loaned our Star Wars DVD to a friend of his, so I had to call him and make him get it back.”

  I listened in astonishment. Everyone, it seemed— Maya, the Moscovitzes’ housekeeper; Lilly; even Michael’s parents—had been in on Michael’s scheme to recreate the Screening Room right in his own apartment.

  Only I had been in ignorance of his plan. Just as he had been in ignorance of my belief that he was about to break up with me.

  “Oh,” I said, beginning to feel like the world’s number-one dork. “So… you don’t want to break up?”

  “No, I don’t want to break up,” Michael said, starting to look mad now—probably the way Mr. Rochester looked when he heard Jane had been hanging out with that St. John guy. “Mia, I love you, remember? Why would I want to break up with you? Now come sit down and eat before it gets cold.”

  Then I wasn’t beginning to feel like the world’s number-one dork: I totally felt like it.

  But at the same time, I felt incredibly, blissfully happy. Because Michael had said the L word! Said it right to my face! And in a very bossy way, just like Captain von Trapp or the Beast or Patrick Swayze!

  Then Michael hit the play button on the remote, and the first chords of John Williams’s brilliant Star Wars theme filled the room. And Michael went, “Mia, come on. Unless you want to change out of that dress first. Did you bring any normal clothes?”

  Still, something wasn’t right. Not completely.

  “Do you just love me like a friend?” I asked him, trying to sound cynically amused, you know, the way René would, in order to keep the truth from him—that my heart was pounding a mile a minute. “Or are you in love with me?”

  Michael was staring over the back of the couch at me. He looked like he couldn’t quite believe his ears. I couldn’t believe my own. Had I really just asked him that? Just come out and asked him, flying in the face of all Tina and I had discussed?

  Apparently—judging from his incredulous expression, anyway—I had. I could feel myself starting to turn redder, and redder, and redder, and redder….

  Jane Eyre would so never have asked that question.

  But then again, maybe she ought to have. Because the way Michael responded made the whole embarrassment of having had to ask completely and totally worth it. And the way he responded was, he reached out, took the tiara from me, laid it down on the couch beside him, took both my hands in his, pulled me toward him, and gave me a really long kiss.

  On the lips.

  Of the French variety.

  We missed the entire scrolling prologue to the movie, due to kissing. Then finally when the sound of Princess Leia’s starship being fired upon roused us from our passionate embrace, Michael said, “Of course I’m in love with you. Now come sit down and eat.”

  It truly was the most romantic moment of my entire life. If I live to be as old as Grandmère, I will never be as happy as I was at that moment. I just stood there, thrilled to pieces, for about a minute. I mean, I could barely get over it. He loved me. Not only that, he was in love with me! Michael Moscovitz is in love with me, Mia Thermopolis!

  “Your burger is getting cold,” he said.

  See? See how perfect we are for each other? He is so practical, while I have my head in the clouds. Has there ever been as perfect a couple? Has there ever been as perfect a date?

  We sat there, eating our veggie burgers and watching Star Wars , he in his jeans and vintage Boomtown Rats T-shirt, and me in my Chanel ball gown. And when Ben Kenobi said, “Obi-Wan? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” we both went, right on cue, “How long?” And Ben said, as he always does, “A very long time.”

  And when, just before Luke flies off to attack the Death Star, Michael put it on pause so he could go get dessert, I helped him clear the plates.

  And then, while he was making the ice-cream sundaes, I snuck back into the TV room, and put his present on his TV table, and waited for him to come back and find it, which he did, a few minutes later.

  “What’s this?” he wanted to know, as he handed me my sundae, vanilla ice cream drowning in a sea of hot fudge, whipped cream, and pistachios.

  “It’s your birthday present,” I said, barely able to contain myself, I was so excited to see what he’d think of it. It was way better than candy or a sweater. It was, I thought, the perfect gift for Michael.

  I feel like I had a right to be excited, because I’d paid a pretty hefty price for Michael’s gift… weeks of worrying about being found out, and then, after having been found out, being forced to waltz with Prince René, who was a good dancer, and all, but who kind of smelled like an ashtray, to tell the truth.

  So I was pretty stoked as Michael, with a puzzled expression on his face, sat down and picked up the box.

  “I told you that you didn’t have to get me anything,” he said.

  “I know.” I was bouncing up and down, I was so excited. “But I wanted to. And I saw this, and I thought it was perfect .”

  “Well,” Michael said. “Thanks.” He untied the ribbon that held the minuscule box closed, then lifted the lid….

  And there, sitting on a wad of white cotton, it was. A dirty little rock, no bigger than an ant. Smaller than an ant, even. The size of the head of a pushpin.

  “Huh,” Michael said, looking down at the tiny speck. “It’s… it’s really nice.”

  I laughed delightedly. “You don’t even know what it is!”

  “Well,” he said. “No, I don’t.”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Well,” he said, again. “It looks like… I mean, it closely resembles… a rock.”

  “It is a rock,” I said. “Guess where it’s from.”

  Michael eyed the rock. “I don’t know. Genovia?”

  “No, silly,” I crowed. “The moon! It’s a moon rock! From when Neil Armstrong was up there. He collected a bunch of them, and then brought them back and gave them to the White House, and Richard Nixon gave my grandmother a bunch of them when he was in office. Well, he gave them to Genovia, technically. And I saw them and thought… well, that you should have one. Because I know you like space stuff. I mean how you’ve got the glow-in-the-dark constellations on the ceiling over your bed and all…”

  Michael looked up from the moon rock—which he’d been staring down at like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing—and went, “When were you in my room?”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling myself beginning to blush again. “A long time ago—” Well
, it had been a long time ago. It had been way back before I’d known he liked me, when I’d been sending him those anonymous love poems “—once when Maya was cleaning in there.”

  Michael said, “Oh,” and looked back down at the moon rock.

  “Mia,” he said, a few seconds later. “I can’t accept this.”

  “Yes, you can,” I said. “There’s plenty left back at the palace museum, don’t worry. Richard Nixon must have really had a thing for Grandmère, because I’m pretty sure we got more moon rocks than Monaco or anybody else. ”

  “Mia,” Michael said. “It’s a rock. From the moon. ”

  “Right,” I said, not certain what he was getting at. Did he not like it? It was kind of weird, I guess, to give your boyfriend a rock for his birthday. But it wasn’t just any rock. And Michael wasn’t just any boyfriend. I’d really thought he’d like it.

  “It’s a rock,” he said again, “that came from two hundred thirty thousand miles away. From Earth. Two hundred thirty thousand miles away from Earth.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering what I had done wrong. I had only just gotten Michael back, after having spent a whole week convinced he was going to dump me over one thing, only to discover that he was going to dump me over something else entirely? There is seriously no justice in the world. “Michael, if you don’t like it, I can give it back. I just thought—”

  “No way,” he said, moving the box out of my grasp. “You’re not getting this back. I just don’t know what I’m going to get you for your birthday. This is going to be a hard act to follow.”

  Was that all? I felt my blush receding.

  “Oh, that,” I said. “You can just write me another song.”

  Which was kind of vixenish of me to say, because he had never admitted that the song, the first one he’d ever played me, “Tall Drink of Water,” was about me. But I could tell by the way he was smiling now that I’d guessed correctly. It was. It totally was.

  So then we ate our sundaes and watched the rest of the movie, and when it was over and the credits were rolling, I remembered something else I’d meant to give him, something I’d thought of in the cab on the way down from the Contessa’s, when I’d been trying to think up what I was going to say to him if he broke up with me.

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought of a name for your band.”

  “Not,” he said with a groan, “the X-Wing Fighters. I beg of you.”

  “No,” I said. “Skinner Box.” Which is this thing this one psychologist used on all these rats and pigeons to prove there’s such a thing as a conditioned response. Pavlov, the guy Michael had named his dog after, had done the same thing, but with dogs and bells.

  “Skinner Box,” Michael said carefully.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I just figured, since you named your dog Pavlov—”

  “I kind of like it,” Michael said. “I’ll see what the guys say.”

  I beamed. The evening was turning out so much better than I had originally thought it would, I couldn’t really do anything but beam. In fact, that’s why I locked myself in the bathroom. To try to calm down a little. I am so happy, I can barely write. I—

  Saturday, January 24, the loft

  Oops. I had to break off there last night, because Lilly started banging on the bathroom door, wanting to know whether I’d suddenly become bulemic or something. When I opened it (the door, I mean) and she saw me in there with my journal and my pen, and she went, all crabby (Lilly is more of a morning person than a night person), “Do you mean to say you’ve been in here for the past half hour writing in your journal ?”

  Which I’ll admit is a little weird, but I couldn’t help it. I was so happy, I HAD to write it down, so I would never forget how it felt.

  “And you still haven’t figured out what you’re good at?” she asked.

  When I shook my head, she just stomped away, all mad.

  But I couldn’t be annoyed with her, because… well, because I’m so in love with her brother.

  The same way I can’t really be mad at Grandmère, even though she did, in essence, try to foist me off on this homeless prince last night. But I can’t blame her for trying. She was only trying to make herself look better in front of her friend.

  Besides, she called here a little while ago, wanting to know if I was feeling all right after the bad truffle I’d ingested. My mom, playing along, assured her that I was fine. So then Grandmère wanted to know if I could come over and have tea with her and the Contessa… who was just dying to get to know me better. I said I was busy with homework. Which ought to impress the Contessa. You know, with my diligent work ethic.

  And I can’t be mad at René, either, after the way he fully came to my aid last night. I wonder how he and Bella got along. It would be pretty funny if they hit it off… well, funny to everyone but Grandmère.

  And I can’t even be mad at Thompson Street Cleaners for losing my Queen Amidala underwear, because this morning there was a knock on the door to the loft, and when I opened it, our neighbor Ronnie was there with a big bag of our laundry, including Mr. G’s brown cords and my mom’s Free Winona T-shirt. Ronnie says she must have accidentally picked up the wrong bag from the vestibule, and then she’d gone to Barbados with her boss for the holidays, and only just now noticed that she had a bag of clothing that was not her own.

  Although I am not as happy about getting my Queen Amidala underwear back as you might think. Because clearly, I can get along without them. I was thinking about asking for more of them for my birthday, but now I don’t have to, because Michael, even though he doesn’t know it, has already given me the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten.

  And no, it’s not his love—although that is probably the second greatest thing he could have given me. No, it’s something that he said after Lilly went stomping away from the bathroom.

  “What was that all about?” he wanted to know.

  “Oh,” I said, putting away my journal, “she’s just mad because I haven’t figured out what my secret talent is.”

  “Your what?” Michael said.

  “My secret talent.” And then, because he’d been so honest with me, with the whole being in love thing, I decided to be honest with him, too. So I explained, “It’s just that you and Lilly, you’re both so talented. You guys are good at so many things, and I’m not good at anything, and sometimes I feel like… well, like I don’t belong. At least not in Gifted and Talented class, anyway.”

  “Mia,” Michael said. “You’re totally gifted.”

  “Yeah,” I said, fingering my dress. “At looking like a snowdrop.”

  “No,” Michael said. “Although now that you mention it, you’re pretty good at that, too. But I meant writing.”

  I have to admit, I kind of stared at him, and went, in a pretty unprincesslike manner, “Huh?”

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious,” he said, “that you like to write. I mean, your head is always buried in that journal. And you always get A’s on your papers in English. I think it’s pretty obvious, Mia, that you’re a writer.”

  And even though I had never really thought about it before, I realized Michael was right. I mean, I am always writing in this journal. And I do compose a lot of poetry, and write a lot of notes and e-mails and stuff. I mean, I feel like I am always writing. I do it so much, I never even thought about it as being a talent. It’s just something I do all the time, like breathing.

  But now that I know what my talent is, you can bet I am going to start working on honing it. And the first thing I’m going to write is a bill to submit before the Genovian Parliament to get some traffic lights downtown. The intersections there are murder….

  Right after I get home from going bowling with Michael and Lilly and Boris. Because even a princess has to have fun sometimes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Beth Ader, Alexandra Alexo, Jennifer Brown, Kim Goad Floyd, Darcy Jacobs, Laura Langlie, Amanda Maciel, Abby McAden, and Benjamin Egnatz.

  Belated thanks to the
Beckham family, especially Julie, for so generously allowing me to borrow Molly’s sock-swallowing habit!

  About the Author

  Meg Cabot is the author of the best-selling, critically acclaimed Princess Diaries books, the first of which was made into the wildly popular Disney movie of the same name. Her other books for teens include ALL-AMERICAN GIRL, HAUNTED, NICOLA AND THE VISCOUNT, and VICTORIA AND THE ROGUE. She is still waiting for her real parents, the king and queen, to restore her to her rightful throne. She lives in New York City with her husband and a one-eyed cat named Henrietta.

  Visit Meg’s website at: www.megcabot.com

  Books by

  MEG CABOT

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME II:

  PRINCESS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME III:

  PRINCESS IN LOVE

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME IV:

  PRINCESS IN WAITING

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME IV AND A HALF:

  PROJECT PRINCESS

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME V:

  PRINCESS IN PINK

  PRINCESS LESSONS: A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK

  PERFECT PRINCESS: A PRINCESS DIARIES BOOK

  ALL-AMERICAN GIRL

  HAUNTED: A TALE OF THE MEDIATOR

  NICOLA AND THE VISCOUNT

  VICTORIA AND THE ROGUE

  Credits

  Cover photographs © 2003 by Howard Huang

  Cover © 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.