Royal Crown Read online

I gasp. I can’t help it. That’s a pretty seriously bad thing to do!

  Luisa, on the other hand, rolls her eyes. “Is that all?”

  “I know,” Nishi says, laughing, too. “My parents are making such a big deal out of it.”

  “It is a big deal,” I say. Dylan sounds like a seriously bad boy to me. I’ve never met him, but I already don’t like him, any more than I like Roger the duke. “Cheating? You could get expelled for cheating at the Royal Genovian Academy.”

  “It was in the fifth grade,” Nishi reminds me. “It’s not like it mattered.”

  “Of course it matters!” I explode. “When you cheat, you’re only cheating yourself. You’ll never know how well you could have done if you’d only tried!”

  Nishi looks even more confused. “Did you read that on a poster in your guidance counselor’s office, or something?”

  “Never mind her, Nishi,” Luisa says, waving a hand at me dismissively. “She’s just jealous because she’s never been kissed. Not even by a cheater.”

  Nishi stares at me. “You and Prince Khalil have never kissed?” I can hardly stand the look of sympathy that appears on her face. “Oh, Olivia! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  More than ever before in my life, I want to strangle Luisa. But I can’t, because I’m her hostess. Instead, I have to be nice to her.

  But it’s really, really hard.

  “My relationship with Prince Khalil is very new,” I explain in my most reasonable voice. “It hasn’t progressed to kissing yet, and maybe it never will, and that’s just fine with me. Everyone matures at their own rate. We don’t even like that romantic mushy stuff. And anyway, not everything has to be about physical demonstrations of—”

  “Eeeeeeee!” Luisa squeals.

  But it isn’t because of anything I’ve said. It’s because her phone has just dinged to indicate that she’s gotten a text message. When she looks at the screen, her face is aglow with excitement. “It’s him!”

  “The duke?” Nishi asks, even though it’s totally obvious from Luisa’s joyous expression that it’s the duke.

  “Yes!” Luisa cries. “It’s Roger! And he says he’s sorry for not texting me earlier and for being such a jerk!”

  “That’s so great!”

  Nishi jumps into Luisa’s arms, and the two of them leap around the hallway, hugging each other and screaming as if they’ve just found out they’d won the lottery. Not even the regular lottery, but the Mega Millions.

  Well, I guess the palace walls aren’t that thick after all, I want to say sarcastically, but I know they won’t hear me. They’re too busy having their ridiculous squealfest.

  At least until Grandmère comes out and says, “Would you two young ladies please keep it down? If your jumping and screaming wakes the royal twins, whom we’ve finally managed to get to sleep, I will hold you personally responsible. We still have a dungeon in this palace, you know, and I have no reservations about sending you there to sleep for the night.”

  Nishi and Luisa stop screaming and jumping and instead hug all smugly, like they know some kind of secret that I’m not part of, probably about kissing boys.

  But that’s fine, because I know a secret, too: My dad had the dungeon converted to a wine cellar—and state-of-the-art gym—a long time ago. Tourists still pay eight euros to see it as part of the palace tour (four euros for children, students, and seniors).

  Tuesday, December 29

  2:00 A.M.

  Royal Genovian Bedroom

  I’m writing this in my bathroom because Nishi and Luisa are both asleep on air mattresses on my bedroom floor, and I don’t want to wake them up by turning on a light to write this. Mostly because that would be rude, but also because then they’ll start talking about kissing (and other things) that I don’t want to hear about anymore.

  Of course we have guest rooms with actual beds that they could have slept in, but neither of them wanted to sleep in a guest room because it’s much easier for them to torture me from air mattresses on my floor than it is from a guest room.

  But I wish they’d stayed in their own rooms, because then I wouldn’t have had the VERY EMBARRASING MIDNIGHT CONVERSATION that I just had, which I need to write about right now, to get it all out of my head, or I will never, ever get to sleep.

  So, yes, it’s true:

  I’m thirteen years old and I’ve never been kissed (even though I have a boyfriend. Or at least a friend-who-is-a-boy about whom I feel romantically).

  But I don’t see what the big deal is! I haven’t kissed him yet, either. There’s no law that says boys have to kiss girls first. Girls can do the kissing first if they want to.

  I just don’t want to.

  Okay, fine: sometimes I think I want to.

  In Europe, you kiss everyone hello and good-bye on both cheeks (usually twice), so technically, I’ve kissed my friend-who-is-a-boy dozens of times saying hello and good-bye.

  But never on the lips.

  Really, all we’d have to do to kiss like a proper couple is have one of us move our head slightly while we’re kissing good-bye. Just slightly.

  And then BANG. Khalil’s mouth would land on mine, and we’d finally be kissing.

  So I guess I know how kissing works. I’ve seen it done hundreds of times, and I’m not even counting on TV or at the movies. Michael and Mia kiss ALL THE TIME, and so do my dad and my stepmom, and Tina and her boyfriend, Boris P, and even Grandmère and the chief of Genovian security (gross) … and don’t even get me started on Luisa and the duke. It’s crazy, actually, how many people are kissing around me. I can hardly stand it sometimes.

  I suppose it’s nice that so many people I know are in love.

  But I can’t help wondering why the person I’m in love with—at least I think I’m in love with him, because the thought of him ever leaving Genovia to go back to his home country, a place I know he longs for, fills my heart with cold, hard terror—doesn’t seem to want to kiss me at all.

  Maybe he’s as nervous about kissing me as I am about kissing him.

  “It’s true,” Nishi said tonight in my room when the subject of kissing came up (she wouldn’t let it die after she found out that Khalil and I had never kissed, even though I wanted to drop the subject very much). “Boys are just as nervous about kissing as girls are, even though they try to act cool about it. Dylan told me.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about this,” I said from my bed. “I really, really want to talk about something else. Anything else. Anything else at all. Like these.” I held up a macaron from the plate beside my bed, which Chef Bernard had given to us as a midnight snack. “Aren’t they delicious?”

  Macarons are my new favorite dessert. They aren’t really cookies, but they aren’t really cakes, either. They are two soft little biscuit-y things stuck together with buttercream or jam, and come in assorted flavors. There are ordinary flavors, such as chocolate, orange, vanilla, and raspberry, but then there are weirder flavors and flavor combinations, like pistachio, lychee, rose and passion fruit, and apricot and saffron.

  “Yum,” I said, popping a chocolate-and-raspberry one into my mouth. “I just love macarons so much.”

  “Does anyone have a tampon I can borrow?” Luisa asked from her air mattress.

  “Oh, I do,” Nishi said, and leaned over to grab her toiletry bag.

  “Luisa,” I said, trying not to sound as exasperated as I felt. “I don’t want to talk about this, either. And you just had your period two weeks ago. How can you be having it again?”

  “Wow, Olivia, I didn’t know you kept such careful track of my gynecological functions,” Luisa said. “Do you have a special app for that, or something?”

  I blushed. “No! I’m just saying that you seem to have your period way more than most people.”

  “I’m sorry if the fact that I’m so fertile upsets you, Olivia,” Luisa said. “I can’t help that I’m a woman now and you aren’t.”

  Nishi gasped and sat straight up in bed. “Olivia! You haven�
��t kissed a boy or had your period yet?”

  Seriously. I’m third in line to the throne of one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and yet this is the kind of thing I have to put up with almost daily in my personal life? I bet this never happened to my sister.

  “How could you not tell me?” Nishi demanded. “I thought we told each other everything!”

  “I do tell you everything, Nishi, except when there’s nothing to tell. And how often you have your period has nothing to do with your fertility, Luisa.” I could tell by her smile that she was enjoying the fact that she’d upset me. “But if you’re really having it as often as you say you are, maybe you should see a doctor, because it’s possible you have a tumor, or internal bleeding, or something.”

  I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I’ve honestly never met anyone who has her period more than Lady Luisa Ferrari. She loves asking people if they have a tampon she can “borrow.”

  I put “borrow” in quotation marks because sometimes when I hear her ask this, I go, “Gross, Luisa! You’re not going to give it back used, are you?” to which she always replies, “Oh, grow up, Olivia. You’re so immature.”

  But if you ask me, she’s the immature one. The only reason she doesn’t carry her own tampons is so that she can ask people if they have one, to show off that she’s gotten her period, and that other people (namely me) haven’t, to rub it in that it has not happened to them yet.

  But that is perfectly normal, according to the Royal Genovian Physician. I asked.

  “There is no ‘right age’ for a girl to get her period,” Dr. Khan said. “Whatever is right for her individual body is right. Most girls get it between ages ten and fifteen, with the average being a little over twelve.”

  So at age thirteen, I’m perfectly normal!

  In fact, according to my calculations (based on the number of times Luisa has asked other women—in front of me—if she can “borrow” a tampon), Luisa is the one who is abnormal. She has her period approximately every three days, which is a physical impossibility (unless she is suffering from some kind of disorder), since you’re only supposed to get it once a month, for approximately four to seven days.

  But I happen to know Luisa is not suffering from a disorder, because I made Grandmère ask the baroness if everything was all right with Luisa (you know … down there. I know that everything is not all right with Luisa emotionally).

  And the baroness—Luisa’s grandmother—told Grandmère that Luisa is perfectly fine.

  And okay, I know it’s stupid—and even gross—to get your grandmother involved in a discussion like this. But I felt like I had to do it, because:

  a)  I was genuinely concerned about Lady Luisa’s health.

  b)  As a future wildlife illustrator, I am interested in biology of all kinds, even human.

  c)  I had to prove Luisa was faking having her period all the time in order to make me feel inferior for not having had my period at all yet.

  Which isn’t going to work anymore, because like I said, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!!! To quote Dr. Khan, everyone grows and matures at their own rate.

  And no one should be made to feel inferior for not maturing at the same rate as their peers, the way Luisa often tries to make me feel.

  “I’m sorry, Olivia,” Nishi said. “I didn’t know the subject of menstruation was so embarrassing and sensitive for you. If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.”

  “It isn’t!” I hissed. “And I’m not embarrassed by it. I’m just saying, Luisa seems to get hers way more than seems normal.”

  “Do you think that maybe it just appears that way to you because you’ve never had yours?” Luisa asked. “And maybe you’re a little jealous because you’ve never experienced the natural beauty that is menarche?”

  “No!” I cried. “And could you not call it that?”

  “Why not?” Luisa asked. “As a future wildlife illustrator, I would think you would want to call it by its proper name.”

  “Menarche does sound a little weird,” Nishi said. “Let’s think up our own code word for it so we can discuss it in front of boys and they won’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “Let’s not,” I said.

  “That’s a great idea, Nishi,” Luisa said. “But what should the code word be? It can’t be a normal word.”

  “‘Cake,’” Nishi said. “‘Oh, you guys, I got my cake today and I’m so crampy.’”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense,” Luisa said. “We need a better word. How about ‘shells’?”

  “‘Shells’?” I practically yelled. “Why would you do that to the sweet exoskeleton of a marine creature you find by the ocean?”

  “I kind of like it,” Nishi said. “Like, ‘Oh, I got shells, I’m so bloated.’”

  “That makes even less sense than ‘cake,’” I said. Why was Nishi going along with everything Luisa said? How could she not see how evil and terrible Lady Luisa was? Was this because they’d both kissed boys?

  “I love it,” Luisa said. “‘Shells’ it is.”

  “Great,” Nishi said, then held up the tampon she’d found in her bag. “Do you still want this, Lady Luisa?”

  “Yes,” Luisa said, and snatched it out of Nishi’s hand. Then she got out of bed and went to my bathroom, slamming the door behind her, which was rude, because it could have woken the babies, who admittedly are seven doors down in the nursery, but they seem to have inherited Grandmère’s extremely sensitive hearing.

  “I’m sorry, Olivia,” Nishi said softly, after Luisa was gone. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “No,” I said, even though I was, sort of. I didn’t know why, though, really. It was good for Nishi to get along with Luisa. Luisa needed someone to be on her side, someone who wasn’t only doing it to be polite, like I was.

  But it still sort of felt like Nishi and Luisa were ganging up on me a little.

  “You know, I feel bad; I honestly didn’t know how terrible things are going for you here, Olivia” was Nishi’s next unexpected comment.

  “What?” I said from my bed. “What do you mean? Nothing is terrible for me here.”

  “Well,” Nishi said. “I mean, you do have all these nice things, and you get to live in this great place with a great family and be a princess, and all. But your own cousin is suing you for the crown, and you also have a boyfriend who won’t kiss you, and you’re thirteen and you still haven’t even had your shells yet. So, you know.”

  Uh, no, Nishi. I don’t know. WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME? What am I missing out on, exactly? I’m actually extremely happy and doing great, thanks.

  That’s what I wanted to say. That’s what I wanted to yell, actually.

  But I didn’t think it would be very polite. So all I said was, “You know, Nishi, we all grow and mature at our own rate.”

  “Well,” Nishi said. “Yes, I know. But—”

  “So just because I’m not doing things at the same rate as you and Luisa doesn’t mean my life is any better or worse than yours.”

  “Oh,” Nishi said. “Okay. Well … I guess that’s true.”

  “Don’t guess that it’s true, Nishi,” I said. “It is true. There is plenty of empirical data to support it. It is a fact.”

  “Fine,” Nishi said. “You don’t have to be so defensive about it.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “At least, I’m not trying to be. Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Nishi said. “Does this mean we can’t try the babysitting thing? Because I really need the money. And I think we’d be good at it. At least you and I would.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not so sure about Lady Luisa. She’s a little bit of a snob.”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling relieved that on this, at least, Nishi and I were still in agreement. “She is. But, I mean, we can try it if you really want to.”

  “Good. Because even though you can’t change the thing about your period,” Nishi whispered, “or getting Khalil to kiss y
ou, or the thing with your cousin suing for the crown, you can at least get your dad to pay you for babysitting the twins.”

  I stared up at my bedroom ceiling. Have I mentioned that there is a mural on it painted to look like the sky, with big fluffy white clouds and pretty birds flying around in it?

  Well, there is.

  “Fine,” I whispered. “We can ask him tomorrow.”

  “Whisperers at the table shall breakfast in the stable,” Luisa said as she came flouncing out of the bathroom. This is one of Grandmère’s favorite expressions. It means that people who get caught telling secrets in front of other people will get kicked out of the house, which is ridiculous, since Luisa doesn’t own this house. My dad and my sister do.

  “Ha ha, Luisa,” I said. “We aren’t even at the table. Nishi was just asking me a question.”

  “And what question was that?” Luisa asked, getting back into her bed. “Was it about shells?”

  Ugh. Uggggggggghhhhhhhh.

  “No. She wanted to know what the surprise is that Prince Khalil got for me in Paris,” I said.

  I know that was a lie, but I was tired of talking about shells.

  And maybe I was a little tired of Nishi thinking my life was so terrible. Maybe I wanted them to know that my friend-who-is-a-boy liked me enough to get me a surprise.

  Anyway, it worked. Both Luisa and Nishi stared at me.

  “Prince Khalil got you something in Paris?” Luisa asked. There was definitely a note of jealousy in her voice. “What is it?”

  “How would I know?” I asked with a shrug. “It’s a surprise. He’s going to bring it when he comes over.”

  “What could it be?” Nishi was excited. I could tell because she was hugging her knees to her chest, which she always does when she’s sitting down and gets excited. “If it’s from Paris, it has to be something really great!”

  “Like designer perfume,” Luisa said. “Or a new dress by Claudio!”

  “Or jewelry!” Nishi cried. “Oh, Olivia, what if it’s another diamond heart pendant like you got for your birthday from Prince Gunther? You didn’t want a heart necklace from him, but from Prince Khalil, that would actually be romantic. You’re so lucky!”