Princess in Love Page 16

  “Because that,” Grandmère said, “is the cowardly way. And you, Mia, as you have shown amply this past week, are not a coward. Now get dressed.”

  I don’t know why I did what she said. Maybe it was because somewhere deep inside, I knew that for once, Grandmère was right.

  Or maybe it was because secretly, I guess I was a little curious to see what would happen.

  But I think the real reason was because, for the first time in my entire life, Grandmère didn’t call me Amelia.

  No. She called me Mia.

  And because of my stupid sentimentalism, I am in a car right now, going back to stupid, crappy Albert Einstein High School, the dust from which I thought I’d managed to shake permanently from my feet not four hours ago.

  But no. Oh, no. I’m going back, in the stupid velvet party dress Sebastiano designed for me. I’m going back, with no date. I’m going back, and I will probably be ridiculed for being the dateless biological freak that I am.

  I am, however, a princess, and apparently that means I am expected to take whatever is dished out at me, no matter how cruel, unfair, or undeserved it might be.

  And regardless of what happens, I can always comfort myself with the knowledge of one thing:

  Tomorrow, I will be thousands of miles away from all of this.

  Oh, God. We’re here.

  I think I’m going to be sick.

  Saturday, December 20, Royal Genovian Jet

  When I was about to turn six years old, all I wanted for my birthday was a cat.

  I didn’t care what kind of cat. I just wanted one. I wanted a cat of my very own. We had been to visit my mom’s parents at their farm in Indiana, and they had a lot of cats. One of them had had kittens, little fluffy orange and white ones, which purred loudly when I held them under my chin, and liked to curl up inside the bib of my overalls and take naps. More than anything in the world, I wanted to keep one of those kittens.

  I should mention that at the time, I had a thumb-sucking problem. My mother had tried everything to get me to stop sucking my thumb, including buying me a Barbie, in spite of her fundamental stand against Barbie and all that she stands for, as a sort of bribe. Nothing worked.

  So when I started whining to her about wanting a kitten, my mom came up with a plan. She told me she would get me a kitten for my birthday if I quit sucking my thumb.

  Which I did, immediately. I wanted a cat of my own that badly.

  Yet, as my birthday rolled around, I had my doubts my mother would live up to her end of the bargain. For one thing, even at the age of six, I knew my mom wasn’t the most responsible person. Why else was our electricity always being turned off? And about half the time I would show up at school wearing a skirt AND pants, because my mother let me decide what to wear. So I wasn’t sure she’d remember about the kitten—or that, if she did remember, she’d know where to get one.

  So as you can imagine, when the morning of my sixth birthday rolled around, I wasn’t holding out much hope.

  But when my mother came into my bedroom holding this tiny ball of yellow and white fur, and plopped it into my chest, and I looked into Louie’s (he didn’t become Fat Louie until about twenty-something pounds later) great big blue eyes (this was before they turned green), I knew a joy such as I had never known before in my life, and never expected to feel again.

  That is, until last night.

  I am totally serious.

  Last night was the best night of my ENTIRE life. After that whole fiasco with Sebastiano and the photos, I thought I would never ever feel anything like gratitude to Grandmère EVER again.

  But she was SO RIGHT to make me go to that dance. I am SO GLAD I went back to Albert Einstein, the best, the loveliest school in the whole country, if not the whole world!!!!!!!

  Okay, here’s what happened:

  Lars and I pulled up in front of the school. There were twinkly white lights in all the windows, that I guess were supposed to represent icicles, or whatever.

  I was sure I was going to throw up and I mentioned this to Lars. He said I couldn’t possibly throw up because to his certain knowledge I hadn’t eaten anything since the Entenmann’s cake way before lunch, and that was probably all digested by now. With that piece of encouraging information, he escorted me up the steps and into the school.

  There were masses of people teeming around the coat check in the front entrance. Lars checked our coats while I stood there waiting for someone to come up and ask me what I was doing there without a date. All that happened, however, was that Lilly-and-Boris and Tina-and-Dave descended upon me and started acting all nice and said how happy they were that I’d come (Tina told me later that she’d already explained to everyone that Kenny and I had broken up, although she hadn’t told them why, THANK GOD).

  So, fortified, by my friends, I went into the gym, which was decorated all wintry, with cut-out paper snowflakes, one of those disco balls, and fake snow everywhere, which I must say looked a lot whiter and cleaner than the snow that was starting to pile up on the ground outside.

  There were tons of people there. I saw Lana and Josh (ugh), Justin Baxendale with his usual flock of adoring fans, and Shameeka and Ling Su and a bunch of other people. Even Kenny was there, though when he saw me, he turned bright red and turned around and started talking to this girl from our Bio class. Oh well.

  Everyone was there, except the one person I’d been most dreading. Or hoping to see. I didn’t know which.

  Then I saw Judith Gershner. She had changed out of her overalls and looked quite pretty in this red Laura Ashley-ish dress.

  But she wasn’t dancing with Michael. She was dancing with some boy I’d never seen before.

  So I looked around for Lilly, and finally spotted her using one of the pay phones. I went up to her and was like, “Where’s your brother?”

  Lilly hung up the phone. “How should I know?” she demanded. “It’s not my turn to baby-sit him.”

  Oddly comforted by her demeanor—which simply proved that no matter how much other things change, Lilly always stayed the same—I went, “Well, Judith Gershner is here, so I just figured—”

  “For God’s sake,” Lilly said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Michael and Judith are not going out.”

  I went, “Oh, right. Then why have they spent every waking moment together for the past two weeks?”

  “Because they were working on that stupid computer program for the Carnival,” she said. “Besides, Judith Gershner already has a boyfriend.” Lilly grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around so I could see Judith on the dance floor. “He goes to Trinity.”

  I looked at Judith Gershner as she slow-danced with a boy who looked a lot like Kenny, only older and not as uncoordinated.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Oh is right,” Lilly said. “I don’t know what is wrong with you today, but I can’t deal with you when you’re acting like such a freak. Sit down right here—” She pulled out a chair. “And don’t you dare get up. I want to know where to find you when I need to.”

  I didn’t even ask Lilly why she might need to find me. I just sat down. I felt like I couldn’t stand up anymore. I was that tired.

  It wasn’t that I was disappointed. I mean, I didn’t want to see Michael. At least, part of me didn’t.

  Another part of me really wanted to see him and ask him just what he’d meant by that poem.

  But I was sort of afraid of the answer.

  Because it might not be the one I was hoping it would be.

  After a while, Lars and Wahim came and sat down next to me. I felt like a complete tool. I mean, there I was, sitting at a dance with two bodyguards, who were deep in a discussion about the advantages versus the disadvantages of rubber bullets. Nobody was asking me to dance. Nobody would, either. I mean, I’m a huge, colossal loser. A huge, colossal loser without a date.

  Who, by the way, is supposedly in love with Boris Pelkowski.

  Why was I even staying? I had done what Grandmère said
. I had shown up. I had proved to everyone that I wasn’t a coward. Why couldn’t I leave? I mean, if I wanted to?

  I stood up. I said to Lars, “Come on. We’ve been here long enough. I still have a lot of packing to do. Let’s go.”

  Lars said okay, and started to get up. Then he stopped. I saw that he was looking at something behind me. I turned around.

  And there was Michael.

  He had obviously just gotten there. He was out of breath. His bow tie wasn’t tied. And there was still snow in his hair.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” he said.

  I knew my face had gone as red as Judith Gershner’s dress. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that. I said, “Well, I almost didn’t.”

  He said, “I called you a bunch of times. Only you wouldn’t come to the phone.”

  I said, “I know.” I was wishing the floor of the gym would open up, like in It’s a Wonderful Life, and that I’d fall into the pool underneath it and drown and not have to have this conversation.

  “Mia,” he said. “With that thing today. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  Or the floor would open and I could just fall, and keep falling, forever and ever and ever. That would be okay, too. I stared at the floor, willing it to crack apart and swallow me up.

  “It didn’t.” I lied. “I mean, it wasn’t that. It was something Kenny said.”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “Well, I heard you two broke up.”

  Yeah. Probably by now the whole school had. Now, I knew, my face was even redder than Judith’s dress.

  “The thing is,” Michael went on, “I knew it was you. Who was leaving those cards.”

  If he had reached inside my chest, pulled out my heart, flung it to the floor, and kicked it across the room, it could not possibly have hurt as much as hearing that. I could feel my eyes filling up with tears all over again.

  “You did?” You know, it’s one thing to have your heart broken. But to have it happen at a school dance, in front of everyone . . . well, that’s harsh.

  “Of course I did,” he said. He sounded impatient. “Lilly told me.”

  For the first time, I looked up into his face.

  “Lilly told you?” I cried. “How did she know?”

  He waved his hand. “I don’t know. Your friend Tina told her, I guess. But that’s not important.”

  I looked around the gym and saw Lilly and Tina on the far side of it, both staring in my direction. When they saw me looking at them, they turned around really fast and pretended to be deeply absorbed in conversation with their dates.

  “I’m going to kill them,” I murmured.

  Michael reached out and grabbed both my shoulders. “Mia,” he said, giving me a little shake. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I meant what I wrote. And I thought you did, too.”

  I didn’t think I could have heard him right. I went, “Of course I meant it.”

  He shook his head. “Then why did you freak out like that today at the Carnival?”

  I stammered, “Well, because . . . because . . . I thought . . . I thought you were making fun of me.”

  “Never,” he said.

  And that’s when he did it.

  No fuss. No asking my permission. No hesitation whatsoever. He just leaned down and kissed me, right on the lips.

  And I found out, right then, that Tina was right:

  It isn’t gross if you’re in love with the guy.

  In fact, it’s the nicest thing in the whole world.

  And do you know what the best part is?

  I mean, aside from Michael being in love with me, and having kept it a secret almost as long as I have, if not longer?

  And Lilly knowing all along but not saying anything up until a few days ago because she found it an interesting social experiment to see how long it would take us to figure it out on our own (a long time, it turned out)?

  And the fact that Michael’s going to Columbia next year, which is only a few subway stops away, so I’ll still be able to see him as much as I want?

  Oh, and Lana walking by while we were kissing, and going, in this disgusted voice, “Oh, God, get a room, would you please?”

  And slow dancing with him all night long, until Lilly finally came up and said, “Come on you guys, it’s snowing so hard, if we don’t leave now, we’ll never get home”?

  And kissing good night outside the stoop to my loft, with the snow falling all around us (and grumpy Lars complaining he was getting cold)?

  No, the best part is that we moved right into Frenching without any trouble at all. Tina was right—it just seemed perfectly natural.

  And now the royal Genovian flight attendant says we have to put away our tray tables for takeoff, so I’ll have to quit writing in a minute.

  Dad says if I don’t stop talking about Michael, he’s going to go sit up front with the pilot for the flight.

  Grandmère says she can’t get over the change in me. She says I seem taller. And you know, maybe I am. She thinks it’s because I’m wearing another one of Sebastiano’s original creations, designed just for me, just like the dress that was supposed to make Michael see me as more than just his little sister’s best friend . . . except that it turned out he did anyway. But I know that’s not it.

  And it isn’t love, either. Well, not entirely.

  I’ll tell you what it is: self-actualization.

  Well, that and the fact that it turns out I’m really a princess, after all. I must be, because guess what?

  I’m living happily ever after.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Beth Ader, Jennifer Brown, Barbara Cabot, Sarah Davies, Laura Langlie, Abby McAden, and David Walton.

  About the Author

  Meg Cabot has lived in Indiana, California, and France, and has worked as an assistant dorm manager at a large urban university, an illustrator, and a writer of historical romance novels (under a different name). She is still waiting for her real parents, the king and queen, to come and restore her to her rightful throne. She currently resides in New York City with her husband and a one-eyed cat named Henrietta.

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

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Books by

  Meg Cabot

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME II:

  PRINCESS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME III:

  PRINCESS IN LOVE

  Credits

  Cover photographs © 2001 by Timothy Hampson

  Cover design by Alison Donalty

  Cover © 2001 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. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  THE PRINCESS DIARIES, VOLUME III: PRINCESS IN LOVE. Copyright © 2002 by Meggin Cabot. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN: 9780061958472

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