Princess in Waiting Read online

  it is only seven o’clock where she is, and

  she got her own cell phone for Christmas, so even though right now she is skiing in Aspen, I can still reach her, even if she is on a ski lift, or whatever.

  Thank God I have my own phone in my room. Even though I do have to dial 9 to get a line outside of the palace.

  20 DSLSM

  Friday, January 9, 3:05 a.m.,

  Royal Genovian bedchamber

  Tina answered on the very first ring! She totally wasn’t on a ski lift. She sprained her ankle on a slope yesterday. Oh, thank you, God, for causing Tina to sprain her ankle, so that she could be there for me in my hour of need.

  And it is okay, because she says it only hurts when she moves.

  Tina was in her room at the ski lodge, watching the Lifetime Movie Channel when I called (Co-ed Call Girl , in which Tori Spelling portrays a young woman struggling to pay for her college education with money earned working as an escort—based on a true story).

  At first it was very difficult to get Tina to focus on the situation at hand. All she wanted to know about was what I’m going to say when I meet Prince William. I tried to explain to her that according to Grandmère, I am not allowed to say anything to Prince William beyond It is very nice to meet you . She is apparently fearful that I will launch into my treatise on parking meters, which she finds less than scintillating.

  Besides, what does it even matter what I say to him? My heart belongs to another.

  This response was extremely dissatisfying to Tina.

  “The least you can do,” she said, “is get his e-mail address for me. I mean, not everyone is in as an emotionally satisfying romantic relationship as you are, Mia.”

  Ever since she started going out with him, Tina’s boyfriend, Dave, has shied away from commitment, saying that a man can’t let himself get tied down before the age of sixteen. So even though Tina claims Dave is her Romeo in cargo pants, she has been keeping her eyes open for a nice boy willing to make a commitment. Although I think Prince William is too old for her. I suggested she try for Will’s little brother, Harry, who I hear is actually very cute as well, but Tina said then she’d never get to be queen, a sentiment I guess I can understand, although believe me, being royal loses a lot of its glamour once it actually happens to you.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do my best to get Prince William’s e-mail address for you. But I do have other things on my mind, Tina. Like for instance that there is a distinct possibility that Michael only likes me as a friend.”

  “What?” Tina was shocked. “But I thought you said he used the L word the night of the Nondenominational Winter Dance!”

  “He did,” I said. “Only he didn’t say he was in love with me. He just said he loved me.”

  Fortunately I didn’t have to explain any further. Tina has read enough romance novels to know exactly what I was getting at.

  “Guys don’t say the word love unless they mean it, Mia,” she said. “I know. Dave never uses it with me.” There was a throb of pain in her voice.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, sympathetically. “But the question is, how did Michael mean it? I mean, Tina, I’ve heard him say he loves his dog. But he is notin love with his dog.”

  “I guess I can see what you mean,” Tina said, though she sounded kind of doubtful. “So, what are you going to do?”

  “That’s why I called you!” I said. “I mean, do you think I should just ask him?”

  Tina let out a cry of pain. I thought it was because she’d jiggled her sprained ankle, but really it was because she was so horrified by what I’d asked.

  “Of course you can’t just come out and ask him!” she cried. “You can’t put him on the spot like that. You’ve got to be more subtle. Remember, he’s Michael, which of course makes him vastly superior to most guys… but he’s still a guy.”

  I hadn’t thought of this. I hadn’t thought of a lot of things, apparently. I couldn’t believe that I had just been going along on this sea of bliss, happy just to know Michael even liked me, while the whole time, he could have been falling in love with some other, more intellectually or athletically gifted girl.

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe I should just be like, ‘Do you like me as a friend, or do you like me as a girlfriend?’”

  “Mia,” Tina said. “I really do not think you should ask Michael point-blank like that. He might run away in fear, like a startled fawn. Boys have a tendency to do that, you know. They aren’t like us. They don’t like to talk about their feelings.”

  It is just so sad that to get any kind of trustworthy advice about men, I have to call someone eight thousand miles away. Thank God for Tina Hakim Baba, is all I have to say.

  “So what do you think I should do?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s going to be hard for you to do anything,” Tina said, “until you get back here. The only way to tell what a boy is feeling is to look into his eyes. You’ll never get anything out of him over the phone. Boys are no good at talking on the phone.”

  This was certainly true, if my ex-boyfriend Kenny had been any sort of indication.

  “I know,” Tina said, sounding like she’d just gotten a good idea. “Why don’t you ask Lilly?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d feel kind of funny about dragging her into something that’s between Michael and me—” The truth was, Lilly and I still hadn’t really even talked about me liking her brother, and her brother liking me back. I had always thought she’d be kind of mad about it. But then it turned out in the end she actually kind of helped us get together, by telling Michael I was the one who’d been sending him those anonymous love letters.

  “Just ask her,” Tina said.

  “But it’s really late there,” I said.

  “Late? It’s only, like, nine o’clock in Florida!”

  “Yeah, and that’s what time Lilly and Michael’s grandparents go to bed. I don’t want to call and wake them up. Then they’ll hate me forever.” And it will make things uncomfortable at the wedding. I didn’t say this part out loud. Although probably I could have, and Tina would have understood.

  “They won’t care if you wake them up, Mia,” Tina said. “You’re calling from a different time zone. They’ll understand. And be sure to call me back after you talk to her! I want to know what she says.”

  I have to admit that, as I dialed, my fingers were shaking. Not so much because I was afraid of waking up Mr. and Mrs. Moscovitz and having them hate me for it forever, but because there was a chance Michael might answer. What was I going to say if he did? I had no idea. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was not going to say, “Do you like me as a friend, or do you like me as a girlfriend?” Because Tina had told me not to.

  Lilly answered on the first ring. Our conversation went like this:

  Lilly:

  Whoa. It’s you.

  Me:

  Is it too late to call? I didn’t wake up your grandparents, did I?

  Lilly:

  Well, yeah. Kinda. But they’ll get over it. So. How is it?

  Me:

  You mean Genovia? Um, okay, I guess.

  Lilly:

  Oh, yes. I’m sure it’s just okay, being waited on hand and foot, having your every need tended to by servants, and wearing a crown all the time.

  Me:

  The crown kind of hurts. Look. Just tell me the truth, Lilly. Has Michael found another girl?

  Lilly:

  Another girl? What are you talking about?

  Me:

  You know what I mean. Some Floridian girl, who can surf. Some girl named Kate, or possibly Anne Marie, with one blue eye and one brown eye. Just tell me, Lilly, I can take the truth, I swear.

  Lilly:

  First of all, for Michael to have met another girl, that would mean he’d have to tear himself from his laptop and leave the condo, which he has done only for meals and to buy more computer equipment the entire time we have been here. He is as pasty-skinned as ever. Secondly, he is not going
to go out with some girl named Kate, because he likes you.

  Me:

  (practically crying with relief) Really, Lilly? You swear? You aren’t just lying to make me feel better?

  Lilly:

  No, I’m not. Though I don’t know how long his devotion to you is going to last, considering you didn’t even remember his birthday.

  I felt something clutch at my throat. Michael’s birthday! I had forgotten Michael’s birthday! I had written it in my new datebook and everything, but with everything that had been going on…

  “Oh, my God, Lilly,” I shrieked. “I completely forgot!”

  “Yes,” Lilly said. “You did. But don’t worry. I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect a card or anything. I mean, you’re off being the Princess of Genovia. How can you be expected to remember something as important as your boyfriend’s birthday?”

  This seemed really unfair to me. I mean, Michael and I have only been going out for twenty-two days, and for twenty-one of them, I have been very, very busy. I mean, it is all very well for Lilly to joke, but I haven’t seen her christening any battleships or crusading for the installation of public parking meters. It may never have occurred to anyone, but this princess stuff is hard work.

  “Lilly,” I said. “Can I talk to him, please? Michael, I mean?”

  “Sure,” Lilly said. Then she screamed, “Michael! Phone!”

  “Lilly!” I cried, shocked. “Your grandparents!”

  “Puh-lease ,” she said. “This’ll get them back for slamming the front door at five every single morning when they go to pick up the Times .”

  It was a long time after that that I finally heard some footsteps, and then Michael going to Lilly, “Thanks.” Then Michael picked up the phone and went, kind of curiously, since Lilly hadn’t told him who it was, “Hello?”

  Just hearing his voice made me forget all about how it was after three in the morning and I was miserable and hating my life. Suddenly it was like it was two in the afternoon and I was lying on one of the beaches I was working so hard to protect from erosion and pollution by tourists, with the warm sun pouring down on me and someone offering me an ice-cold Orangina from a silver tray. That’s how Michael’s voice made me feel.

  “Michael,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Mia,” he said, sounding genuinely happy to hear from me. I don’t think it was my imagination, either. He really did sound pleased, and not like he was getting ready to dump me for Kate Bosworth at all. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. Then, to get it out as soon as possible, I went, “Listen, Michael, I can’t believe I missed your birthday. I suck. I can’t believe how much I suck. I am the most horrible person who ever walked the face of the planet.”

  Then Michael did a miraculous thing. He laughed. Laughed! Like missing his birthday was nothing!

  “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I know you’re busy over there. And there’s that time-zone thing, and all. So. How’s it going? Has your grandmother let you off for that parking-meter thing, or is she still on your case about it?”

  I practically melted right there in the middle of my big, fancy royal bed, with the phone clutched to my ear and everything. I couldn’t believe he was being so nice to me, after the terrible thing I had done. It wasn’t like twenty days had gone by at all. It was like we were still standing in front of my stoop, with the snow coming down and looking so white against Michael’s dark hair and Lars getting mad in the vestibule because we wouldn’t stop kissing and he was cold and wanted to go inside already.

  I couldn’t believe I had ever thought Michael might fall in love with some Floridian girl with multicolored eyes and a surfboard. I mean, I still wasn’t exactly sure he was in love with me, or anything. But I was pretty sure he liked me.

  And right there, at three in the morning, sitting by myself in my royal bedchamber in the Palais de Genovia, that was enough.

  So then I asked him about his birthday, and he told me how they’d gone to Red Lobster and Lilly’d had an allergic reaction to her shrimp cocktail and they’d had to cut the meal short to go to Promptcare because she’d swollen up like Violet in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory , and now she has to carry a syringe filled with adrenaline around with her in case she accidentally ingests shellfish ever again, and how Michael’s parents got him a new laptop for when he goes to college and how when he gets back to New York he is thinking about starting a band since he is having trouble finding sponsors for his webzineCrackhead on account of how he did that groundbreaking exposé on how much Windows sucks and how he only uses Linux now.

  Apparently a lot of Crackhead ’s former subscribers are frightened of the wrath of Bill Gates and his minions.

  I was so happy to be listening to Michael’s voice that I didn’t even notice what time it was or how sleepy I was getting until he went, “Hey, isn’t it, like, four in the morning there?” which by that point it was. Only I didn’t care because I was so happy just to be talking to him.

  “Yes,” I said dreamily.

  “Well, you’d better get to bed,” Michael said. “Unless you get to sleep in. But I bet you have stuff to do tomorrow, right?”

  “Oh,” I said, still all lost in rhapsody, which is what the sound of Michael’s voice sends me into. “Just a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the hospital. And then lunch with the Genovian Historical Society. And then a tour of the Genovian zoo. And then dinner with the minister of culture and his wife.”

  “Oh, my God,” Michael said, sounding alarmed. “Do you have to do that kind of stuff every day?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, wishing I was there with him, so that I could gaze into his adorably brown eyes while hearing his adorably deep voice, and thus know whether or not he loved me, since this was, according to Tina, the only way you could tell with boys.

  “Mia,” he said, with some urgency. “You’d better get some sleep. You have another huge day ahead of you.”

  “Okay,” I said happily.

  “I mean it, Mia,” he said. He can be so authoritative sometimes, just like the Beast in Beauty and the Beast , my favorite movie of all time. Or the way Patrick Swayze bosses Baby around in Dirty Dancing. So, so exciting. “Hang up the phone and go to bed.”

  “You hang up first,” I said.

  Sadly, he got less bossy after this. Instead, he started talking in this voice I had only ever heard him use once before, and that was on the stoop in front of my mom’s apartment building the night of the Nondenominational Winter Dance, when we did all that kissing.

  Which was actually even more exhilarating than when he was bossing me around, to be truthful.

  “No,” he said. “You hang up first.”

  “No,” I said, thrilled to pieces. “You.”

  “No,” he said. “You.”

  “Both of you hang up,” Lilly said, very rudely, over the extension. “I have to call Boris before his nightly Benadryl kicks in.”

  So we both said good-bye very hastily and hung up.

  But I’m almost positive Michael would have said I love you if Lilly hadn’t been on the line.

  Ten days until I see him again. I can hardly WAIT!!!!!!!

  Saturday, January 10

  Royal Daily Schedule

  1 p.m.–3 p.m.

  Lunch with Genovian Historical Society

  Grandmère can be so mean. Seriously. Imagine pinching me, just because she thought I had dozed off for a few seconds at lunch! I swear I am going to have a bruise now. It’s a good thing I don’t have any time to go to the beach, because if I did and anyone saw the mark she’d left, they’d probably call Genovian Child Protective Services, or whatever.

  And I wasn’t asleep, either. I was just resting my eyes.

  Grandmère says it is thoughtless of “that boy” to keep me up all hours whispering sweet nothings in my ear. She says Prince René would never treat any of his girlfriends so cavalierly.

  I informed her very firmly that Michael had actually told me to hang up, because
he cares very deeply about me, and that I was the one who kept on talking. And that we don’t whisper sweet nothings to each other, we have substantive discussions about art and literature and Bill Gates’s stranglehold on the software industry.

  To which Grandmère replied, “Pfuit!”

  But you can tell she is totally jealous because she would like a boyfriend who is as smart and thoughtful as mine. But that will so never happen, because Grandmère is too mean, and besides, there is that whole thing she does with her eyebrows. Boys like girls with real eyebrows, not painted-on ones.

  Nine days until I am once more in the arms of my love.

  Saturday, January 10, 11 p.m.,

  Royal Genovian bedchamber

  I am so excited! Tina, not being able to join her family on the ski slopes, spent all day in an Aspen Internet café looking up all of her friend’s horoscopes. Last night she faxed over me and Michael’s horoscopes! I am taping them here in my datebook so I won’t lose them. They are so accurate it is making my spine tingle.

  Michael—Date of Birth = January 5

  Capricorn is the leader of the Earth signs. Here is a stabilizing force, one of the hardest-working signs of the Zodiac. The Mountain Goat has intense powers of self-concentration, but not in an egotistical sense. Members of this sign find a great deal more confidence in what they do than in who they are. Capricorn is one very high achiever! Without balance, however, Capricorn can become too rigid, and focus too much on achievement. Then they forget the little joys in life. When the Goat finally relaxes and enjoys life, his or her most delightful secrets emerge. No one has a better sense of humor than the Capricorn. Oh, that Cap might let us bask in that warm smile!

  Mia—Date of Birth = May 1

  Ruled by loving Venus, Taurus has great emotional depth. Friends and lovers rely on the warmth and emotional accessibility of the Bull. Taurus represents consistency, loyalty, and patience. Fixed earth can be very rigid, too cautious to take some of the risks necessary in life. Sometimes the Bull ends up temporarily stuck in the mud. He or she may not want to rise to every challenge or potential. And stubborn? Yes! The Taurean Bull may always surface. This sign’s Yin energy can also go too far, causing Taurus to become very, very passive. Still, you cannot ask for a better lover or more loyal friend.