Princess in Pink Read online

  “Busboys from all over the city have gathered here in front of Les Hautes Manger to show their solidarity with Jangbu Panasa, the employee who was dismissed from Les Hautes Manger last night after an incident involving the dowager princess of Genovia.”

  In spite of all of this, however, Grandmère remained completely unmoved. She just looked at the screen and clacked her tongue.

  “Blue,” she said, “isn’t Lilly’s best color, is it?”

  I seriously don’t know what I am going to do with the woman. She is completely IMPOSSIBLE.

  Friday, May 2, the loft

  You would think in my own house I would find a little peace and quiet. But no, I come home to find my mom and Mr. G in a raging fight. Usually their fights are about the fact that Mom wants a home birth with a midwife and Mr. G wants a hospital birth with the staff of the Mayo Clinic in attendance.

  But this time it was because my mom wants to name the baby Simone if it’s a girl, after Simone de Beauvoir, and Sartre if it’s a boy, after—well, some guy named Sartre, I guess.

  But Mr. G wants to name the baby Rose if it’s a girl, after his grandma, and Rocky if it’s a boy, after… well, apparently after Sylvester Stallone. Which, you know, having seen the movie Rocky, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since Rocky was very nice and all….

  But my mom says over her dead body will her son—if she has a son—be named after a practically illiterate prize-fighter.

  Still, if you ask me, Rocky is better than the last boy’s name they came up with: Granger. Thank God I went and looked up Granger in the baby-name book I bought them. Because once I let them know that Granger means “farmer” in Middle French, they totally cooled on it. Who names their baby “Farmer”?

  Amelia doesn’t mean anything in French. It is said to be derivative of Emily, or Emmeline, which means “industrious” in Old German. The name Michael, which is old Hebrew, means “He who is like the Lord.” So you see that together, we make a very nice pair, being industrious and lordlike.

  But the fight didn’t end with the whole Sartre-versus-Rocky thing. Oh no. My mom wants to go to BJ’s Wholesale Club in Jersey City tomorrow to buy the supplies for my party, but Mr. G is afraid that terrorists might set off a bomb in the Holland Tunnel, trapping them in there like Sylvester Stallone in the movie Daylight, and then Mom might go into labor prematurely and have the baby with the water from the Hudson River gushing all around.

  Mr. G just wants to go to Paper House on Broadway to buy Queen Amidala birthday plates and cups.

  Hello, I hope they know I am fifteen years—not months— old, and that I can perfectly understand everything that they are saying.

  Whatever. I put on my headphones and turned on my computer in the hope of finding some solace from all the raised voices, but no such luck. Lilly could only have just gotten home from her protest thingie, but she’s already managed to send around a mass e-mail to everyone in school:

  Fr: WOMYNRULE

  ATTENTION ALL STUDENTS OF

  ALBERT EINSTEIN HIGH:

  Your help and support is vitally needed by the Students Against the Wrongful Dismissal of Jangbu Panasa Association (SATWDOJPA)! Join us tomorrow (Saturday, May 3) at noon for a rally in Central Park, and then a protest march down Fifth Avenue to the doors of Les Hautes Manger on 57th Street. Show your disapproval over the way New York City restaurateurs treat their employees! Do not listen to thepeople who argue that ours is the Materialistic Generation! Make your voice heard!

  Lilly Moscovitz, President

  SATWDOJPA

  Hello. I didn’t know my generation was the Materialistic Generation. How can that even be? I hardly own anything. Except a cell phone. And I’ve only had that for, like, a day.

  There was another message from Lilly. It went:

  WOMYNRULE: Mia, missed you today at the rally. You should have been there, it was totally AMAZING! Busboys from as far away as Chinatown joined our peaceful protest. There was such a feeling of camaraderie and warmth! Best of all, you’ll never guess who showed up—Jangbu Panasa himself! He came to Les Hautes Manger to pick up his last paycheck. Was he ever surprised to see us all there, picketing on his behalf! He was really shy at first and didn’t want to talk to me. But I informed him that, though I might have been brought up in an upper-class household, and my parents are members of the intelligentsia, at heart I am as working class as he is, and have only the best interests of the common man at heart. Jangbu is coming to the march tomorrow! You should come, too, it’s going to be awesome!!!!!!!!

  —Lilly

  P.S. You didn’t tell me Jangbu was only eighteen years old. Did you know that he is a Sherpa? Seriously. From Nepal. Back in his home country, he already graduated from high school. He came here searching for a better life because agricultural trade in his homeland has been brought to a standstill by the politics of the Chinese occupying power in Tibet, and the only non-agricultural job young Sherpas can get is serving as porters and guides up Mount Everest. But Jangbu doesn’t like heights.

  P.P.S.You also didn’t tell me he was so HOT!!!! He looks like a cross between Jackie Chan and Enrique Iglesias.

  It really is quite exhausting to have geniuses as both your best friend and your boyfriend. I swear I can hardly keep up with the two of them. Their mental gymnastics are totally beyond me.

  Fortunately there was also an e-mail from Tina, whose intellectual capacity is more equal to my own:

  ILUVROMANCE: Mia, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ve decided that the best time for you to ask Michael whether or not he is going to ask you to the prom really will be tomorrow night at your party. What I think we should do is organize a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven (your mom won’t care, right? I mean, she and Mr. G aren’t going to actually BE THERE during the party, are they?), and when you are in the closet with Michael, and things get hot and heavy with him, you should pop the question. Believe me, no boy can say no to anything during Seven Minutes in Heaven. Or so I’ve read.

  —T

  Jeez! What is with my friends? It is like they live in a completely different universe than I do. Seven Minutes in Heaven? Has Tina lost her mind? I want to have a NICE party, with Coke and Cheetos and maybe the Time Warp if I can get Mr. G to help me move the futon couch. I do NOT want a party where people are going off in the closet to make out. I mean, if I want to make out with my boyfriend, I will do it in the privacy of my own room… except of course that I’m not allowed to have Michael over when no one else is home, and when he is over, I have to leave the bedroom door open at least four inches at all times (thanks, Mr. G. You know, it totally sucks having a stepfather who is also a high-school teacher, because who is better equipped to rain on a teenager’s parade than a high-school teacher?).

  I swear, between my grandmother and my friends, I don’t know who causes me the most headaches.

  At least Michael left a nice message:

  LINUXRULZ: You seemed pretty quiet during G and T today. Are you okay?

  Thank God my boyfriend can be counted on to always be supportive of me. Except, of course, when he neglects to ask me to the prom.

  I decided to ignore Lilly’s and Tina’s e-mails, but I wrote back to Michael. I tried to implement some of that subtlety Grandmère was talking about the other day. Not that I approve of Grandmère right now or anything. Still, it must be stated that she has had a lot more boyfriends than I have.

  FTLOUIE: Hey! I’m fine.Thanks for asking. I just can’t shake this feeling lately that there’s something I’ve forgotten. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, though. Something to do with this time of year, though, I think….

  There! Perfect! Subtle, yet pointed. And Michael, being a genius, was sure to get it. Or so I thought, until he wrote back… which he did right away, since I guess he was online as well.

  LINUXRULZ: Well, judging by the C you got on that quiz today, I’d say what you’re forgetting is everything we’ve been going over these past few weeks in Algebra. If you want, I’ll come
over on Sunday and help you with Monday’s assignment.

  —M

  Oh, my God. Did any girl ever have a boyfriend so totally clueless? Except possibly Lilly? Except that I think even Boris Pelkowski would have seen through my artless ploy above.

  I am so depressed. I think I am going to go to bed. There is a Farscape marathon on, but I am not in the mood to watch other people’s space adventures. My own are upsetting enough.

  Saturday, May 3, Day of the Big Party

  My mom poked her head in bright and early and asked me if I wanted to go with her and Mr. G to BJ’s for party supplies. I guess she won the fight. Normally I love BJ’s, on account of the cavernous warehouse filled with oversize stuff, and the free cheese samples and the popcorn and everything. Not to mention the drive-through liquor store Mr. G likes to hit on the way home, where they open your trunk and fill it with six-packs of Coke without your ever even having to get out of the car.

  But today, for some reason, I was too depressed even for the drive-through liquor store. So I just stayed under the covers and asked my mom weakly if she minded going without me. I said I had a sore throat and thought I should stay in bed until it was time for the party, just to make sure I was well enough actually to attend it.

  I don’t think my mom really fell for the whole sick act, but she didn’t say anything about it. She just went, “Suit yourself,” and left with Mr. G. Which, considering the mood she’s been in lately, is actually letting me off pretty lightly.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am such a failure. I mean, I have all these problems. I want to go to the prom with my boyfriend, only he hasn’t asked me, and I’m too afraid he’ll think I’m being pushy to discuss it with him. I don’t want to spend my summer in Genovia, but I signed a stinking contract saying I would, and now I don’t think I can get out of it. My best friend is trying to do all this good for mankind and everything, and I can’t be bothered to lift so much as a piece of posterboard to help her out, even though the person she’s trying to help is someone whose misfortunes are all my fault in the first place. And my grade is starting to slide in Algebra again, and I don’t even care.

  Really, with all that weighing on my shoulders, what choice do I have but to turn on the Lifetime Movie Channel for Women? Maybe if I watch some movies about real-life women who’ve surmounted nearly impossible obstacles, I might find the courage to face my own.

  Hey, it could happen.

  Saturday, May 3, 7:30 p.m., half hour before my party is to begin

  I don’t think turning on the Lifetime Movie Channel for Women was such a hot idea. All it did was make me feel inadequate. Really, I don’t know who could watch movies like that and not feel bad about themselves. I mean, here is just a sampling of what some of these women endured:

  The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story: The Bionic Woman’s Lindsay Wagner saves all but one of the passengers in this true story of a plane hijacking in the mid-eighties. In the movie, Uli convinces the hijackers to spare the lives of the passengers by singing a touching folk song, causing the hijackers’ eyes to tear up.

  Unfortunately I don’t know any folk songs, and the songs I do know—such as Bif Naked’s “I Love Myself Today (Uh-Huh)”—probably wouldn’t soothe anyone, especially a hijacker.

  The Abduction of Kari Swenson: Michael J. Fox’s wife, Tracy Pollan, stars in the true story of an Olympic biathlete who gets kidnapped by hillbillies who want to make her their bride. Ew! As if camping isn’t bad enough. Imagine having to camp with people who’ve never bathed. But Kari gets away and goes on to win the gold, and the bad guys go to jail where they make them shave every day and brush their teeth.

  However, I am no biathlete. I am not even an athlete. If I were kidnapped by hillbillies, I would probably just start crying until they let me go in disgust.

  A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story: The Facts of Life’s Jo gets brutally assaulted by her husband while the cops are watching, then successfully sues the police for failing to protect her, striking a blow for victims of stalkers everywhere.

  But I have a bodyguard. If anybody tried to assault me, Lars would hit them with his stun gun.

  Sudden Terror: The Hijacking of School Bus #17: Maria Conchita Alonso, fresh from her role as Amber in The Running Man, plays Marta Caldwell, the brave driver of a Special Ed bus that gets hijacked by a guy who is mad at the IRS. Her calm and gentle demeanor keeps the hijacker still long enough for a SWAT officer to shoot him in the head through the bus window, much to the horror of her Special Ed charges, who are hit with the guy’s blood spatter and brain tissue.

  But I take a limo to school, so the chances of this happening to me are moot.

  She Woke Up Pregnant: This is the true story of a woman whose dentist has sex with her while she is under anesthesia for a root canal. Then the dentist has the nerve to say he and the patient had an affair and that she’s making up the rape thing so her husband won’t get mad about the new baby… until, that is, a female cop goes undercover as a patient, and the cops use a lipstick camera to catch the dentist in the act of taking the cop’s shirt off!

  But this would never happen to me, as I have nothing in the chestal area that would be of interest even to a psychopathic dentist.

  Miracle Landing: Connie Sellecca plays First Officer Mimi Tompkins who manages successfully to land Flight 243 after its roof is ripped off mid-flight due to metal fatigue. She is not the only brave one on that flight, since there was also a flight attendant who kept checking on the people in the front of the plane where there was no roof, and telling them they were going to be fine even though they had giant pieces of airplane carpet stuck to their heads.

  I would so never be able either to land a plane or tell people with massive head wounds that they were going to be fine, due to the fact that I would be barfing too hard.

  Seriously, I don’t know how anyone can be expected to just hop out of bed after viewing movies like that and feel all good about themselves.

  Even worse, I happened to catch a few minutes of Miracle Pets, and I was orced to admit that as a pet, Fat Louie is pretty much the bottom of the barrel, intelligence-wise. I mean, on Miracle Pets they had a donkey that saved its owner from wild dogs, a parrot that saved its owners from a house fire, a dog that saved its owner from dying of insulin shock by gently shaking her until she ate some gumdrops, and a cat that noticed its owner was unconscious and sat on the auto-dial 911 button on the phone and meowed until help arrived.

  I am sorry, but Fat Louie would be no match for wild dogs, would probably hide in a fire, wouldn’t know a gumdrop from a hole in the wall, and wouldn’t know to sit on the 911 button if I were unconscious. In fact, if I were unconscious, Fat Louie would probably just sit by his food bowl and cry until Ronnie from next door finally went insane and got the super to let her in to shut the cat up.

  Even my cat is a failure.

  Worse, Mom and Mr. G had a fabulous time without me at BJ’s. Well, except for the part where Mom totally had to pee but they were stuck in the middle of the Holland Tunnel, so she had to hold it until they came to the first Shell station on the other side, and when she ran to the ladies’ room it turned out to be locked so she nearly ripped the arm off the gas-station attendant when she grabbed the key from him.

  But they found tons of Queen Amidala stuff, including panties (for me, not the party guests, of course). My mom poked her head into my room when they got home to show me the Amidala panty six-pack she picked up, but I just couldn’t work up any kind of enthusiasm about it, though I tried.

  Maybe I have PMS.

  Or maybe the weight of my newfound womanhood, seeing as how I’m fifteen now, is simply too much to bear.

  And I really should be happy, because Mr. G hung all these Queen Amidala streamers up all over the loft, and strung flashing white Christmas lights all through the pipework on the ceiling, and put a Queen Amidala mask on Mom’s lifesize bust of Elvis. He even promised not to jam on his drums along with th
e music (a carefully selected mix put together by Michael, which includes all of my favorite Destiny’s Child and Bree Sharp releases).

  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???? Is this all just because my boyfriend hasn’t asked me to the prom yet? Why do I even care? Why can’t I be happy with what I have?

  WHY CAN’T I JUST BE GLAD I EVEN HAVE A BOYFRIEND AND LEAVE IT AT THAT?

  This party was such a bad idea. I am so not in a party mood. What was I even thinking, having a party? I AM AN UNPOPULAR NERD PRINCESS!!!!! UNPOPULAR NERD PRINCESSES SHOULD NOT HAVE PARTIES!!!!!!!!! NOT EVEN FOR THEIR UNPOPULAR NERD FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!

  No one is going to come. No one is going to come, and I’m going to end up sitting here all night with the twinkling Christmas lights and the stupid Queen Amidala streamers and the Cheetos and the Coke and Michael’s mix, BY MYSELF.

  Oh, God, the buzzer just went off. Someone is here. Please God, give me the strength to get through this night. Give me the strength of Uli, Kari, Tracey, Marta, that dental-patient lady, Mimi, and that flight attendant. Please, that’s all I ask of you. Thanks.

  Sunday, May 4, 2 a.m.

  Well. That’s it. It’s over. My life is over.

  I would like to thank all of those who stood by me during the hard times: my mother, back before she became a two-hundred-pound quivering mass of bladderless hormones; Mr. G, for attempting to salvage my GPA; and Fat Louie for just being, well, Fat Louie, even if he is totally useless when compared to the animals on Miracle Pets.

  But nobody else. Because everybody else I know is obviously part of some nefarious plot to drive me to madness, just like Bertha Rochester.

  Take Tina, for example. Tina, who shows up at my party and, first thing, grabs me by the arm and drags me into my room, where everybody is supposed to be leaving their coats, and tells me, “Ling Su and I have got it all worked out. Ling Su’ll keep your mom and Mr. G busy, and then I will announce the game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. When it’s your turn, get Michael in the closet and start kissing him and when you’ve reached the height of passion, ask him about the prom.”