MEG CABOT
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express her gratitude to the people who contributed in so many ways to the creation and publication of this book: Beth Ader, Jennifer Brown, Barbara Cabot, Charles and Bonnie Egnatz, Emily Faith, Laura Langlie, Ron Markman, Abigail McAden, A. Elizabeth Mikesell, Melinda Mounsey, David Walton, Allegra Yeley and, most especially, Benjamin Egnatz.
"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."
ALITTLE PRINCESS
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
Contents
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Tuesday, September 23
Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie.
My mom thinks I’m repressing my feelings about this.
Wednesday, September 24, Fifth Period
Lilly’s like, "Mr. Gianini’s cool."
Yeah, right. He’s cool if you’re Lilly Moscovitz.
Thursday, September 25
In Algebra today all I could think about was how Mr. Gianini might put his tongue in my mom’s mouth . . .
Friday, September 26
LILLY MOSCOVITZ’S LIST OF HOTTEST GUYS(compiled during World Civ, with commentary . . .
Later on Friday
I was measuring my chest and totally not thinking about the fact that my mom was out with my Algebra teacher . . .
Saturday, September 27
I was asleep when my mom got home from her date last night . . .
Sunday, September 28
My dad called again today, and this time Mom reallywas at her studio, so I didn’t feel so bad about lying . . .
Monday, September 29, G & T
Today I watched Mr. Gianini very closely for signs that he might not have had as good a time on his date . . .
Tuesday, September 30
Something really weird just happened. I got home from school, and my mom was there . . .
Wednesday, October 1
My dad’s here. Well, not here in the loft. He’s staying at the Plaza, as usual.
Notes from G & T
Lilly—I can’t stand this. When is she going to go back to the teachers’ lounge?
Thursday, October 2,
Ladies’ Room at the Plaza Hotel
Well.
I guess now I know why my dad is so concerned . . .
Later on Thursday,
Penguin House, Central Park Zoo
I’m so freaked out I can barely write, plus people keep bumping my elbow, and it’s dark in here, but whatever.
Even Later on Thursday
Of course, I couldn’t hide out in the penguin house forever. Eventually, they flicked the lights . . .
Friday, October 3, Homeroom
Today when I woke up, the pigeons that live on the fire escape outside my window were cooing away . . .
More Friday, Algebra
Lilly could tell right away something was up. Oh, she swallowed the whole story . . .
Really Late on Friday,
Lilly Moscovitz’s Bedroom
Okay, so I blew off Mr. Gianini’s help session after school. I know I shouldn’t have. Believe me . . .
Saturday, October 4,
Early, Still Lilly’s Place
Why do I always have such a good time when I spend the night at Lilly’s? I mean, it’s not like they’ve got stuff . . .
Later on Saturday
The whole way home from Lilly’s I worried about what my mom and dad were going to say . . .
Saturday Night
I can’t even believe what a loser I am. I mean, Saturday night, alone with my DAD!
Sunday, October 5
I can’t believe Mr. Gianini told her. I can’t believe he told my mother I skipped his stupid review session . . .
Monday, October 6, 3 a.m.
I’ve been up all night, worrying about getting caught cheating. What will happen . . .
Monday, October 6, 4 a.m.
I tried washing the quadratic formula off my shoe, but it won’t come off!
Monday, October 6, 7 a.m.
Decided to wear my Docs and throw my high-tops away on the way to school . . .
Monday, October 6, 9 a.m.
Realized in the car on the way to school that I could have taken the laces out of my high-tops . . .
Monday, October 6, G & T
Okay. I admit it. I looked.
Fat lot of good it did me, too.
Tuesday, October 7
Ode to Algebra Thrust into this dingy classroom . . .
Wednesday, October 8
Oh no.
She’s here.
Thursday, October 9
I found out why.
She’s giving me princess lessons.
Friday, October 10
Princess lessons.
I am not kidding. I have to go straight . . .
Saturday, October 11, 9:30 a.m.
So I was right: Lilly does think the reason I’m not participating in the taping today is because . . .
Saturday, October 11
I can never go to school again. I can never go anywhere again. I will never leave this loft, ever, ever again.
Later on Saturday
Well, I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is, but I sure know who she isn’t: my friend.
Past Midnight, Sunday, October 12
She still hasn’t called.
Sunday, October 12
Oh my God. I am so embarrassed. I wish I could disappear. You will never believe what just happened.
Later on Sunday
Oh, okay. According to my mom, who just came into my room, Mr. Gianini spent the night on the futon couch . . .
Even Later on Sunday
I just turned on my computer to look up some stuff about Afghanistan on the Internet . . .
Even Later on Sunday
Just when I thought things might be looking very slightly up, my dad called.
Monday, October 13, Algebra
When Lars pulled up in front of Lilly’s building to pick her up for school, her doorman said she’d already left.
Later on Monday, French
So even if Lilly and I weren’t in a fight, I wouldn’t have been able to sit with her at lunch today.
Later on Monday
Oh my God. I am in so much trouble. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before!
Monday Night
Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I have detention for a week . . .
Tuesday, October 14, Homeroom
No Lilly again this morning. Not that I expected there to be. But I made Lars stop at her place anyway . . .
More Tuesday, Algebra
Oh my God. I can’t even believe this. But it must be true, since Shameeka just told me.
More Tuesday, English
No boy will ever ask me out. Ever. EVERYONE has a date to the Cultural Diversity Dance . . .
More Tuesday, French
Today in G & T, in between showing me how to carry over, Michael Moscovitz complimented me . . .
Tuesday Night
Grandmère says Tina Hakim Baba sounds like a much better friend for me than Lilly Moscovitz.
Wednesday, October 15, Homeroom
No Lilly again today. Lars suggested we’d make better time if we just drove straight to school . . .
Later on Wednesday, Before Algebra
This totally weird thing happened. Josh Richter came up to his locker to put his Trig book away . . .
Wednesday, Principal Gupta’s Office
It’s over.
I’m dead.
More Wednesday, English
It isn’t fair. This is totally, completely unfair.
More Wednesday, French Class
I guess I should have my picture on the front of thePost more often.
Wednesday Night
No wonder my dad was so mad about Carol Fernandez’s article! When Lars and I walked out of Albert Einstein . . .
More Wednesday
My mom thinks the person who tipped off Carol Fernandez is Grandmère.
Thursday, October 16, Homeroom
Well, this morning my face was on the covers of theDaily News andNew York Newsday.
Thursday, Algebra
Today in Algebra Mr. Gianini was totally trying to teach us about the Cartesian plane . . .
Thursday, G & T
So I was eating lunch with Tina Hakim Baba and Lars and Wahim, and Tina was telling me . . .
More Thursday, French
When I went to my locker after lunch to get my books for French, Josh was there.
Thursday Night
Grandmère says: "Well, of course the boy likes you. What wouldn’t he like? . . . "
Friday, October 17, English
OH MY GOD!!!
JOSH AND LANA BROKE UP!!!!
More Friday
You will not even believe what just happened. I was putting my Algebra book away in my locker . . .
Friday, G & T
Okay, so I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is. First she stops talking to me.
Friday Night
Abbreviated lesson with Grandmère today because of my spending the night at Tina’s.
Saturday, October 18
When I got home, the first thing I did was check to make sure Josh hadn’t called to cancel.
More Saturday
Well, I’m sitting here in my new dress, my new shoes, my new nails, and my new panty hose . . .
Saturday Night,
Ladies’ Room, Tavern on the Green
Okay, so I lied. I brought this book anyway. I made Lars carry it.
Later Saturday Night,
Girls’ Room, Albert Einstein High School
Why?
Why??
Sunday, October 19
I just woke up from the strangest dream.In my dream, Lilly and I weren’t fighting anymore . . .
Sunday Night
Grandmère showed up at the loft today with Dad in tow. Dad wanted to find out how things went at the dance.
About the Author
Tuesday, September 23
Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie.
My mom thinks I’m repressing my feelings about this. I say to her, "No, Mom, I’m not. I think it’s really neat. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy."
Mom says, "I don’t think you’re being honest with me."
Then she hands me this book. She tells me she wants me to write down my feelings in this book, since, she says, I obviously don’t feel I can talk about them with her.
She wants me to write down my feelings? Okay, I’ll write down my feelings:
I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE’S DOING THIS TO ME!
Like everybody doesn’talready think I’m a freak. I’m practically the biggest freak in the entire school. I mean, let’s face it: I’m five foot nine, flat-chested, and a freshman. How muchmore of a freak could I be?
If people at school find out about this, I’m dead. That’s it. Dead.
Oh, God, if you really do exist, please don’t let them find out about this.
There are four million people in Manhattan, right? That makes about two million of them guys. So out of TWO MILLION guys, she has to go out with Mr. Gianini. She can’t go out with some guy I don’t know. She can’t go out with some guy she met at D’Agostinos or wherever. Oh, no.
She has to go out with my Algebra teacher.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks a whole lot.
Wednesday, September 24, Fifth Period
Lilly’s like, "Mr. Gianini’s cool."
Yeah, right. He’s cool if you’re Lilly Moscovitz. He’s cool if you’re good at Algebra, like Lilly Moscovitz. He’s not so cool if you’re flunking Algebra, like me.
He’s not so cool if he makes you stay after school EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY DAY from 2:30 to 3:30 to practice the FOIL method when you could be hanging out with all your friends. He’s not so cool if he calls your mother in for a parent/teacher conference to talk about how you’re flunking Algebra, then ASKS HER OUT.
And he’s not so cool if he’s sticking his tongue in your mom’s mouth.
Not that I’ve actually seen them do this. They haven’t even been on their first date yet. And I don’t think my mom would let a guy put his tongue in her mouth on the first date.
At least, I hope not.
I saw Josh Richter stick his tongue in Lana Weinberger’s mouth last week. I had this totally close-up view of it, since they were leaning up against Josh’s locker, which is right next to mine. It kind of grossed me out.
Though I can’t say I’d mind if Josh Richter kissedme like that. The other day Lilly and I were at Bigelows picking up some alpha hydroxy for Lilly’s mom, and I noticed Josh waiting at the checkout counter. He saw me and he actually sort of smiled and said, "Hey."
He was buying Drakkar Noir, a men’s cologne. I got a free sample of it from the salesgirl. Now I can smell Josh whenever I want to, in the privacy of my own home.
Lilly says Josh’s synapses were probably misfiring that day, due to heatstroke or something. She said he probably thought I looked familiar but couldn’t place my face without the cement block walls of Albert Einstein High behind me. Why else, she asked, would the most popular senior in high school say hey to me, Mia Thermopolis, a lowly freshman?
But I know it wasn’t heatstroke. The truth is, when he’s away from Lana and all his jock friends, Josh is a totally different person. The kind of person who doesn’t care if a girl is flat-chested or wears size-ten shoes. The kind of person who can see beyond all that into the depths of a girl’s soul. I know because when I looked into his eyes that day at Bigelows, I saw the deeply sensitive person inside him, struggling to get out.
Lilly says I have an overactive imagination and a pathological need to invent drama in my life. She says the fact that I’m so upset about my mom and Mr. G is a classic example.
"If you’re that upset about it, justtell your mom," Lilly says. "Tellher you don’t want her going out with him. I don’t understand you, Mia. You’re always going around, lying about how you feel. Why don’t you just assert yourself for a change? Your feelings have worth, you know."
Oh, right. Like I’m going to bum my mom out like that. She’s so totally happy about this date, it’s enough to make me want to throw up. She goes aroundcooking all the time. I’m not even kidding. She made pasta for the first time last night in like months. I had already opened the Suzie’s Chinese take-out menu, and she says, "Oh, no cold sesame noodles tonight, honey. I made pasta."
Pasta! My mom madepasta!
She even observed my rights as a vegetarian and didn’t put any meatballs in the sauce.
I don’t understand any of this.
THINGS TO DO
1. Buy cat litter 2. Finish FOIL worksheet for Mr. G 3. Stop telling Lilly everything 4. Go to Pearl Paint: get soft lead pencils, spray mount, canvas stretchers (for Mom) 5. World Civ report on Iceland (5 pages, double space) 6. Stop thinking so much about Josh Richter 7. Drop off laundry 8. October rent (make sure Mom has deposited Dad’s check!!!) 9. Be more assertive 10. Measure chest
Thursday, September 25
In Algebra today all I could think about was how Mr. Gianini might put his tongue in my mom’s mouth tomorrow night during their date. I just sat there, staring at him. He asked me a really easy question—I swear, he saves all the easy ones for me, like he doesn’t want me to feel left out or something—and I totally didn’t even hear it. I was like, "What?"
Then Lana Weinberger made that sound she always makes and leaned over to me so that all her blond hair swished onto my desk. I got hit by this giant wave of perfume, and then Lana hissed in this really mean voice:
"FREAK."
Only she said it like it had more than one syllable. Like it was spelled FUR-REEK.
How come nice people like Princess Diana get killed in car wrecks but mean people like Lana never do? I don’t understand what Josh Richter sees in her. I mean, yeah, she’s pretty. But she’s somean. Doesn’t henotice?
Maybe Lana is nice to Josh, though.I’d sure be nice to Josh. He is the best-looking boy in Albert Einstein High School. A lot of the boys look totally geeky in our school’s uniform, which for boys is gray pants, white shirt, and black sweater, long-sleeved or vest. Not Josh, though. He looks like a model in his uniform. I am not kidding.
Anyway. Today I noticed that Mr. Gianini’s nostrils stick out A LOT. Why would you want to go out with a guy whose nostrils stick out so much? I asked Lilly this at lunch and she said, "I’ve never noticed his nostrils before. Are you gonna eat that dumpling?"
Lilly says I need to stop obsessing. She says I’m taking my anxiety over the fact that this is only our first month in high school and I already have an F in something, and transferring it to anxiety about Mr. Gianini and my mom. She says this is called displacement.
It sort of sucks when your best friend’s parents are psychoanalysts.
Today after school the Drs. Moscovitz were totally trying to analyze me. I mean, Lilly and I were just sitting there playing Boggle. And every five minutes it was like, "Girls, do you want some Snapple? Girls, there’s a very interesting squid documentary on the Discovery channel. And by the way, Mia, how do you feel about your mother starting to date your Algebra teacher?"
I said, "I feel fine about it."
Whycan’t I be more assertive?
But what if Lilly’s parents run into my mom at Jefferson Market or something? If I told them the truth, they’ddefinitely tell her. I don’t want my mom to know how weird I feel about this, not when she’s so happy about it.
The worst part was that Lilly’s older brother Michael overheard the whole thing. He immediately started laughing his head off, even though I don’t see anything funny about it.
He went, "Yourmom is dating Frank Gianini? Ha! Ha! Ha!"
So great. Now Lilly’s brother Michael knows.
So then I had to start begging him not to tell anybody. He’s in fifth period Gifted and Talented class with me and Lilly, which is the biggest joke of a class, because Mrs. Hill, who’s in charge of the G & T program at Albert Einstein, doesn’t care what we do as long as we don’t make too much noise. She hates it when she has to come out of the teachers’ lounge, which is right across the hall from the G & T room, to yell at us.
Anyway, Michael is supposed to use fifth period to work on his on-line webzine,Crackhead. I’m supposed to use it for catching up on my Algebra homework.
But anyway, Mrs. Hill never checks to see what we’re doing in G & T, which is probably good, since mostly what we’re all doing is figuring out ways to lock the new Russian kid, who’s supposedly this musical genius, in the supply closet so we don’t have to listen to any more Stravinsky on his stupid violin.
But don’t think that just because Michael and I are united against Boris Pelkowski and his violin he’d keep quiet about my mom and Mr. G.
What Michael kept saying was, "What’ll you do for me, huh, Thermopolis? What’ll you do for me?"
But there’s nothing I can do for Michael Moscovitz. I can’t offer to do his homework, or anything. Michael is a senior (just like Josh Richter). Michael has gotten all straight A’s his entire life (just like Josh Richter). Michael will probably go to Yale or Harvard next year (just like Josh Richter).
What couldI do for someone like that?
Not that Michael’s perfect, or anything. Unlike Josh Richter, Michael is not on the crew team. Michael isn’t even on the debate team. Michael does not believe in organized sports, or organized religion, or organized anything, for that matter. Instead, Michael spends almost all of his time in his room. I once asked Lilly what he does in there, and she said she and her parents employ a don’t ask, don’t tell policy with Michael.
I bet he’s in there making a bomb. Maybe he’ll blow up Albert Einstein High School as a senior prank.
Occasionally, Michael comes out of his room and makes sarcastic comments. Sometimes when he does this he is not wearing a shirt. Even though he does not believe in organized sports, I have noticed that Michael has a really nice chest. His stomach muscles are extremely well defined.
I have never mentioned this to Lilly.
Anyway, I guess Michael got tired of my offering to do stuff like walk his sheltie, Pavlov, and take his mom’s empty Tab cans back to Gristedes for the deposit money, which is his weekly chore. Because in the end Michael just said, in this disgusted voice, "Forget it, okay, Thermopolis?" and went back into his room.
I asked Lilly why he was so mad, and she said because he’d been sexually harassing me but I didn’t notice.
How embarrassing! Supposing Josh Richter starts sexually harassing me someday (I wish) and I don’t notice? God, I’m so stupid sometimes.
Anyway, Lilly said not to worry about Michael telling his friends at school about my mom and Mr. G, since Michael has no friends. Then Lilly wanted to know why I cared about Mr. Gianini’s nostrils sticking out so much, since I’m not the one who has to look at them, my mom is.
And I said, "Excuse me, I have to look at them from 9:55 to 10:55 and from 2:30 to 3:30 EVERY SINGLE DAY, except Saturdays and Sundays and national holidays and the summer. If I don’t flunk, that is, and have to go to summer school."
And if they get married, then I’ll have to look at them EVERY SINGLE DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, MAJOR HOLIDAYS INCLUDED.
Define set: collection of objects; element or member belongs to a set
A = {Gilligan, Skipper, Mary Ann}
rule specifies each element
A = {x|xis one of the castaways on Gilligan’s Island}
Friday, September 26
LILLY MOSCOVITZ’S LIST OF HOTTEST GUYS(compiled during World Civ, with commentary by Mia Thermopolis)
1. Josh Richter(agree—six feet of unadulterated hotness. Blond hair, often falling into his clear blue eyes, and that sweet, sleepy smile. Only drawback: he has the bad taste to date Lana Weinberger) 2. Boris Pelkowski(strongly disagree. Just because he played his stupid violin at Carnegie Hall when he was twelve does not make him hot. Plus he tucks his school sweater into his pants, instead of wearing it out, like a normal person) 3. Pierce Brosnan, best James Bond ever(disagree—I liked Timothy Dalton better) 4. Daniel Day Lewis inLast of the Mohicans(agree—stay alive, no matter what occurs) 5. Prince William of England(duh) Leonardo inTitanic(As if! That is so 1998) 6. Mr. Wheeton, the crew coach(hot, but taken. Seen opening the door to the teachers’ lounge for Mademoiselle Klein) 7. That guy in that jeans ad on that giant billboard in Times Square(totally agree. Who IS that guy? They should give him his own TV series) 8. Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman’s boyfriend(whatever happened to him? He was hot!) 9. Joshua Bell, the violinist(totally agree. It would be so cool to date a musician—just not Boris Pelkowski)
Later on Friday
I was measuring my chest and totally not thinking about the fact that my mom was out with my Algebra teacher when my dad called. I don’t know why, but I lied and told him Mom was at her studio. Which is so weird, because obviously Dad knows Mom dates. But for some reason, I just couldn’t tell him about Mr. Gianini.
This afternoon during my mandatory review session with Mr. Gianini, I was sitting there practicing the FOIL method (first, outside, inside, last; first, outside, inside, last—Oh my God, when am I ever going to have to actually use the FOIL method in real life? WHEN???) and all of a sudden Mr. Gianini said, "Mia, I hope you don’t feel, well, uncomfortable about my seeing your mother socially."
Only for some reason for a second I thought he said SEXUALLY, not socially. And then I could feel my face getting totally hot. I mean like BURNING. And I said, "Oh, no, Mr. Gianini, it doesn’t bother me at all."
And Mr. Gianini said, "Because if it bothers you, we can talk about it."
I guess he must have figured out I was lying, since my face was so red.
But all I said was, "Really, it doesn’t bother me. I mean, it bothers me a LITTLE, but really, I’m fine with it. I mean, it’s just a date, right? Why get upset about one measly date?"
That was when Mr. Gianini said, "Well, Mia, I don’t know if it’s going to be one measly date. I really like your mother."
And then, I don’t even know how, but all of a sudden I heard myself saying, "Well, you better. Because if you do anything to make her cry, I’ll kick your butt."
Oh my God! I can’t even believe I said the wordbutt to a teacher! My face got even REDDER after that, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. Why is it that the only time I can tell the truth is when it’s guaranteed to get me into trouble?
But I guess Iam feeling sort of weird about the whole thing. Maybe Lilly’s parents were right.
Mr. Gianini, though, was totally cool. He smiled in this funny way and said, "I have no intention of making your mother cry, but if I ever do, you have my permission to kick my butt."
So that was okay, sort of.
Anyway, Dad sounded really weird on the phone. But then again, he always does. Transatlantic phone calls suck because I can hear the ocean swishing around in the background and it makes me all nervous, like the fish are listening, or something. Plus Dad didn’t even want to talk to me. He wanted to talk to Mom. I suppose somebody died, and he wants Mom to break it to me gently.
Maybe it was Grandmère. Hmmm. . . .
My breasts have grown exactlynone since last summer. Mom was totally wrong. I didnot have a growth spurt when I turned fourteen, like she did. I will probablynever have a growth spurt, at least not on my chest. I only have growth spurts UP, not OUT. I am now the tallest girl in my class.
Now if anybody asks me to the Cultural Diversity Dance next month (yeah, right) I won’t be able to wear a strapless dress because there isn’t anything on my chest to hold it up.
Saturday, September 27
I was asleep when my mom got home from her date last night (I stayed up as late as I could, because I wanted to know what happened, but I guess all that measuring wore me out), so I didn’t get to ask her how it went until this morning when I went out into the kitchen to feed Fat Louie. Mom was up already, which was weird, because usually she sleeps later than me, andI’m a teenager,I’m supposed to be the one sleeping all the time.
But Mom’s been depressed ever since her last boyfriend turned out to be a Republican.
Anyway, she was in there, humming in a happy way and making pancakes. I nearly died of shock to see her actually cooking something so early in the morning, let alone something vegetarian.
Of course she had a fabulous time. They went to dinner at Monte’s (not too shabby, Mr. G!) and then walked around the West Village and went to some bar and sat outside in the back garden until nearly two in the morning, just talking. I kind of tried to find out if there’d been any kissing, particularly of the tongue-in-mouth variety, but my mom just smiled and looked all embarrassed.
Okay. Gross.
They’re going out again this week.
I guess I don’t mind, if it makes her this happy.
Today Lilly is shooting a spoof of the movieThe Blair Witch Project for her TV show,Lilly Tells It Like It Is.The Blair Witch Project is about some kids who go out into the woods to find a witch and end up disappearing. All that’s found of them is film footage and some piles of sticks. Only instead ofThe Blair Witch Project, Lilly’s version is calledThe Green Witch Project. Lilly intends to take a hand-held camera down to Washington Square Park and film the tourists who come up to us and ask if we know how to get to Green Witch Village. (It’s actually Greenwich Village—you’re not supposed to pronounce thew inGreenwich. But people from out of town always say it wrong.)
Anyway, as tourists come up and ask us which way to Green Witch Village, we are supposed to start screaming and run away in terror. All that will be left of us by the end, Lilly says, is a little pile of MetroCards. Lilly says after the show is aired no one will ever think of MetroCards the same way.
I said it was too bad we don’t have a real witch. I thought we could get Lana Weinberger to play her, but Lilly said that would be typecasting. Plus then we’d have to put up with Lana all day, and nobody would want that. Like she’d even show up, considering how she thinks we’re the most unpopular girls in the whole school. She probably wouldn’t want to tarnish her reputation by being seen with us.
Then again, she’s so vain she’d probably jump at the chance to be on TV, even if itis only a public access channel.
After filming was over for the day, we all saw the Blind Guy crossing Bleecker. He had a new victim, this totally innocent German tourist who had no idea that the nice blind man she was helping to cross the street was going to feel her up as soon as they got to the other side, then pretend he hadn’t done it on purpose.
Just my luck, the only guy who’s ever felt me up (not that there’s anything to feel) was BLIND.
Lilly says she’s going to report the Blind Guy to the Sixth Precinct. Like they would care. They’ve got more important things to worry about. Like catching murderers.
THINGS TO DO
1. Get cat litter 2. Make sure Mom sent out rent check 3. Stop lying 4. Proposal for English paper 5. Pick up laundry 6. Stop thinking about Josh Richter
Sunday, September 28
My dad called again today, and this time Mom reallywas at her studio, so I didn’t feel so bad about lying last night and not telling him about Mr. Gianini. He sounded all weird on the phone again, so finally I was like, "Dad, is Grandmère dead?" and he got all startled and said, "No, Mia, why would you think that?"
And I told him it was because he sounded so weird, and he was all, "I don’t sound weird," which was a lie, because he DID sound weird. But I decided to let it drop, and I talked to him about Iceland, because we’re studying Iceland in World Civ. Iceland has the world’s highest literacy rate, because there’s nothing to do there but read. They also have these natural hot springs, and everybody goes swimming in them. Once, the opera came to Iceland, and every show was sold out and something like 98 percent of the population attended. Everybody knew all the words to the opera and went around singing it all day.
I would like to live in Iceland someday. It sounds like a fun place. Much more fun than Manhattan, where people sometimes spit at you for no reason.
But Dad didn’t seem all that impressed by Iceland. I suppose by comparison, Iceland does make every other country look sucky. The country Dad lives in is pretty small, though. I would think if the opera went there, about 80 percent of the population would attend, which would certainly be something to be proud of.
I only shared this information with him because he is a politician, and I thought it might give him some ideas about how to make things better in Genovia, where he lives. But I guess Genovia doesn’t need to be better. Genovia’s number one import is tourists. I know this because I had to do a fact sheet on every country in Europe in the seventh grade, and Genovia was right up there with Disneyland as far as income from the tourist trade is concerned. That’s probably why people in Genovia don’t have to pay taxes: The government already has enough money. This is called a principality. The only other one is Monaco. My dad says we have a lot of cousins in Monaco, but so far I haven’t met any of them, not even at Grandmère’s.
I suggested to Dad that next summer, instead of spending it with him and Grandmère at her French chateau, Miragnac, we go to Iceland. We’d have to leave my grandmother at the chateau, of course. She’d hate Iceland. She hates any place where you can’t order up a decent Sidecar, which is her favorite drink, twenty-four hours a day.
All Dad said was, "We’ll talk about that some other time," and hung up.
Mom is so right about him.
Absolute value: the distance that a given number is from zero on a number line . . . always a positive
Monday, September 29, G & T
Today I watched Mr. Gianini very closely for signs that he might not have had as good a time on his date with my mom as my mom did. He seemed to be in a really good mood, though. During class, while we were working on the quadratic formula (what happened to FOIL? I was just starting to get the hang of it, and all of a sudden there’s some NEW thing; nowonder I’m flunking), he asked if anybody had gone out for a part in the fall musical,My Fair Lady.
Then later he said, in the way he does when he gets excited about something, "You know who would be a good Eliza Doolittle? Mia, I think you would."
I thought I would totally die. I know Mr. Gianini was only trying to be nice—I mean, he is dating my mom, after all—but he was SO far off: First of all because of course they already held auditions, and even if I could’ve gone out for a part (which I couldn’t, because I’m flunking Algebra, hello, Mr. Gianini, remember?) I NEVER would’ve gotten one, let alone the LEAD. I can’t sing. I can barely eventalk.
Even Lana Weinberger, who always got the lead in junior high, didn’t get the lead. It went to some senior girl. Lana plays a maid, a spectator at the Ascot Races, and a Cockney hooker. Lilly is house manager. Her job is to flick the lights on and off at the end of intermission.
I was so freaked out by what Mr. Gianini said I couldn’t evensay anything. I just sat there and felt myself turning all red. Maybe that was why later, when Lilly and I went by my locker at lunch, Lana, who was there waiting for Josh, was all, "Oh, hello,Amelia," in her snottiest voice, even though nobody has called me Amelia (except Grandmère) since kindergarten, when I asked everybody not to.
Then, as I bent over to get my money out of my backpack, Lana must have got a good look down my blouse, because all of a sudden she goes, "Oh, how sweet. I see we still can’t fit into a bra. Might I suggest Band-Aids?"
I would have hauled off and slugged her—well, probably not; the Drs. Moscovitz say I have issues about confrontation—if Josh Richter hadn’t walked up AT THAT VERY MOMENT. I knew he totally heard, but all he said was, "Can I get by here?" to Lilly, since she was blocking his path to his locker.
I was ready to go slinking down to the cafeteria and forget the whole thing—God, that’s all I need, my lack of chest pointed outright in front of Josh Richter!—but Lilly couldn’t leave well enough alone. She got all red in the face and said to Lana, "Why don’t you do us all a favor and go curl up someplace and die, Weinberger?"
Well, nobody tells Lana Weinberger to go curl up someplace and die. I mean, nobody. Not if she doesn’t want her name written up all over the walls of the girls’ room. Not that this would be such a heinous thing—I mean, no boys are going to see it in the girls’ room—but I sort of like keeping my name off walls, for the most part.
But Lilly doesn’t care about things like that. I mean, she’s short and sort of round and kind of resembles a pug, but she totally doesn’t care how she looks. I mean, she has her own TV show, and guys call in all the time and say how ugly they think she is, and ask her to lift her shirt up (sheisn’t flat-chested; she wears a C cup already), and she just laughs and laughs.
Lilly isn’t afraid of anything.
So when Lana Weinberger started in on her for telling her to curl up and die, Lilly just blinked up at her and was like, "Bite me."
The whole thing would have escalated into this giant girl fight—Lilly has seen every single episode ofXena: Warrior Princess, and can kick box like nobody’s business—if Josh Richter hadn’t slammed his locker door closed and said "I’m outta here" in a disgusted voice. That was when Lana just dropped it like a hot potato and scooted after him, going, "Josh, wait up. Wait up, Josh!"
Lilly and I just stood there looking at each other like we couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. Whoare these people, and why do I have to be incarcerated with them on a daily basis?
HOMEWORK
Algebra: problems 1–12, pg. 79 English: proposal World Civ: questions at end of Chapter 4 G & T: none French: useavoir in neg. sentence, rd. lessons one to three, pas de plus Biology: none
B = {x|x is an integer}
D = {2,3,4}
4ED
5ED
E = {x|x is an integer greater than 4 but less than 258}
Tuesday, September 30
Something really weird just happened. I got home from school, and my mom was there (she’s usually at her studio all day during the week). She had this funny look on her face, and then she went, "I have to talk to you."
She wasn’t humming anymore, and she hadn’t cooked anything, so I knew it was serious.
I was kind of hoping Grandmère was dead, but I knew it had to be much worse than that, and I was worried something had happened to Fat Louie, like he’d swallowed another sock. The last time he did that, the vet charged us $1,000 to remove the sock from his small intestines, and he walked around with a funny look on his face for about a month.
Fat Louie, I mean. Not the vet.
But it turned out it wasn’t about my cat, it was about my dad. The reason my dad kept on calling was because he wanted to tell us that he just found out, because of his cancer, that he can’t have any more kids.
Cancer is a scary thing. Fortunately, the kind of cancer my dad had was pretty curable. They just had to cut off the cancerous part, and then he had to have chemo, and after a year, so far, the cancer hasn’t come back.
Unfortunately, the part they had to cut off was . . .
Ew, I don’t even like writing it.
Histesticle.
GROSS!
It turns out that when they cut off one of your testicles, and then give you chemo, you have like a really strong chance of becoming sterile. Which is what my dad just found out he is.
Mom says he’s really bummed out. She says we have to be very understanding of him right now, because men have needs, and one of them is the need to feel progenitively omnipotent.
What I don’t get is, what’s the big deal? What does he need more kids for? He already has me! Sure, I only see him summers and at Christmastime, but that’s enough, right? I mean, he’s pretty busy running Genovia. It’s no joke trying to make a whole country, even one that’s only a mile long, run smoothly. The only other things he has time for besides me are his girlfriends. He’s always got some new girlfriend slinking around. He brings them with him when we go to Grandmère’s place in France in the summer. They always drool all over the pools and the stables and the waterfall and the twenty-seven bedrooms and the ballroom and the vineyard and the farm and the airstrip.
And then he dumps them a week later.
I didn’t know he wanted tomarry one of them and have kids.
I mean, he never married my mom. My mom says that’s because at the time she rejected the bourgeois mores of a society that didn’t even accept women as equals to men and refused to recognize her rights as an individual.
I kind of always thought that maybe my dad just never asked her.
Anyway, my mom says Dad is flying here to New York tomorrow to talk to me about this. I don’t knowwhy. I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do withme. But when I said to my mom, "Why does Dad have to fly all the way over here to talk to me about how he can’t have kids?" she got this funny look on her face and started to say something, and then she stopped.
Then she just said, "You’ll have to ask your father."
This is bad. My mom only says "Ask your father" when I want to know something she doesn’t feel like telling me, like why people sometimes kill their own babies and how come Americans eat so much red meat and read so much less than the people of Iceland.
Note to self: Look up the wordsprogenitive, omnipotent, andmores
distributive law
5x+ 5y- 5
5(x+y - 1)
Distribute WHAT??? FIND OUT BEFORE QUIZ!!!
Wednesday, October 1
My dad’s here. Well, not here in the loft. He’s staying at the Plaza, as usual. I’m supposed to go see him tomorrow, after he’s "rested." My dad rests a lot, now that he’s had cancer. He stopped playing polo, too. But I think that’s because one time a horse stepped on him.
Anyway, I hate the Plaza. Last time my dad stayed there, they wouldn’t let me in to see him because I was wearing shorts. The lady who owns the place was there, they said, and she doesn’t like to see people in cutoffs in the lobby of her fancy hotel. I had to call my dad from a house phone and ask him to bring down a pair of pants. He just told me to put the concierge on the phone, and the next thing you know, everybody was apologizing to me like crazy. They gave me this big basket filled with fruit and chocolate. It was cool. I didn’t want the fruit, though, so I gave it to a homeless man I saw on the subway on my way back down to the Village. I don’t think the homeless man wanted the fruit either, since he threw it all in the gutter and just kept the basket to use as a hat.
I told Lilly about what my dad said, about not being able to have kids, and she said that was very telling. She said it revealed that my dad still has unresolved issues with his parents, and I said, "Well, duh. Grandmère is ahuge pain in the ass."
Lilly said she couldn’t comment on the veracity of that statement since she’d never met my grandmother. I’ve been asking if I could invite Lilly to Miragnac for like years, but Grandmère always says no. She says young people give her migraines.
Lilly says maybe my dad is afraid of losing his youth, which many men equate with losing their virility. I really think they should move Lilly up a grade, but she says she likes being a freshman. She says this way she has four whole years to make observations on the adolescent condition in post–Cold War America.
STARTING TODAY I WILL
1. Be nice to everyone, whether I like him/her or not 2. Stop lying all the time about my feelings 3. Stop forgetting my Algebra notebook 4. Keep my comments to myself 5. Stop writing my Algebra notes in my journal
The 3rd power ofx is called cube ofx —negative numbers have no sq root
Notes from G & T
Lilly—I can’t stand this. When is she going to go back to the teachers’ lounge?
Maybe never. I heard they were shampooing the carpet today. God, he is so CUTE.
Who’s cute?
BORIS!
He isn’t cute. He’s gross. Look what he did to his sweater. Why does he DO that?
You’re so narrow-minded.
I am NOT narrow-minded. But someone should tell him that in America we don’t tuck in our sweaters.
Well, maybe in Russia they do.
But this isn’t Russia. Also, someone should tell him to learn a new song. If I have to hear that requiem for dead King Whoever one more time . . .
You’re just jealous because Boris is a musical genius and you’re flunking Algebra.
Lilly, just because I am flunking Algebra does NOT mean I’m stupid.
OK, OK. What is wrong with you today?
NOTHING!!!!!
slope: slope of a line denotedm is
Find equation of line with slope = 2
Find the degree of slope to Mr. G’s nostrils
Thursday, October 2,
Ladies’ Room at the Plaza Hotel
Well.
I guess now I know why my dad is so concerned about not being able to have more kids.
BECAUSE HE’S A PRINCE!!!
Geez! How long did they think they could keep something likethat from me?
Although, come to think of it, they managed for a pretty long time. I mean, I’ve BEEN to Genovia. Miragnac, where I go every summer, and also most Christmases, is the name of my grandmother’s house in France. It is actually on the border of France, right near Genovia, which is between France and Italy. I’ve been going to Miragnac ever since I was born. Never with my mother, though. Only with my dad. My mom and dad have never lived together. Unlike a lot of kids I know, who sit around wishing their parents would get back together after they get divorced, I’m perfectly happy with this arrangement. My parents broke up before I was ever born, although they have always been pretty friendly to one another. Except when my dad is being moody, that is, or my mom is being a flake, which she can be sometimes. Things would majorly suck, I think, if they lived together.
Anyway, Genovia is where my grandmother takes me to shop for clothes at the end of every summer, when she’s sick of looking at my overalls. But nobody there ever mentioned anything about my dad’s being a PRINCE.
Come to think of it, I did that fact sheet on Genovia two years ago, and I copied down the name of the royal family, which is Renaldo. But even then I didn’t connect it with mydad. I mean, I know his name is Phillipe Renaldo. But the name of the prince of Genovia was listed in the encyclopedia I used as Artur Christoff Phillipe Gerard Grimaldi Renaldo.
And that picture of him must have been totally old. Dad hasn’t had any hair since before I was born (so when he had chemo, you couldn’t even tell, since he was practically bald anyway). The picture of the prince of Genovia showed someone with A LOT of hair, sideburns, and a mustache, too.
I guess I can see now how Mom might have gone for him, back when she was in college. He was something of a Baldwin.
But a PRINCE? Of a whole COUNTRY? I mean, I knew he was in politics, and of course I knew he had money—how many kids at my school have summer homes in France? Martha’s Vineyard, maybe, but notFrance —but a PRINCE?
So what I want to know is, if my dad’s a prince, how come I have to learn Algebra?
I mean, seriously.
I don’t think it was such a good idea for Dad to tell me he was a prince in the Palm Court at the Plaza. First of all, we almost had a repeat performance of the shorts incident: The doorman wouldn’t even let me in at first. He said, "No minors unaccompanied by an adult," which totally blows that wholeHome Alone II movie, right?
And I was all, "But I’m supposed to meet my dad—"
"No minors," the doorman said again, "unaccompanied by an adult."
This seemed totally unfair. I wasn’t even wearing shorts. I was wearing my uniform from Albert Einstein. I mean, pleated skirt, kneesocks, the whole thing. Okay, maybe I was wearing Doc Martens, but come on! I practically WAS that kid Eloise, and she supposedly ruled the Plaza.
Finally, after standing there for like half an hour, saying, "But my dad . . . but my dad . . . but my dad . . . " the concierge came over and asked, "Just whois your father, young lady?"
As soon as I said his name they let me in. I realize now that’s because even THEY knew he was a prince. But his own daughter, his own daughter nobody tells!
Dad was waiting at a table. High tea at the Plaza is supposed to be this very big deal. You shouldsee all the German tourists snapping pictures of themselves eating chocolate chip scones. Anyway, I used to get a kick out of it when I was a little girl, and since my dad refuses to believe fourteen is not little anymore, we still meet there when he’s in town. Oh, we go other places, too. Like we always go to seeBeauty and the Beast, my all-time favorite Broadway musical, I don’t care what Lilly says about Walt Disney and his misogynistic undertones. I’ve seen it seven times.
So has my dad. His favorite part is when the dancing forks come out.
Anyway, we’re sitting there drinking tea and he starts telling me in this very serious voice that he’s the prince of Genovia, and then this terrible thing happens:
I get the hiccups.
This only happens when I drink something hot and then eat bread. I don’t know why. It had never happened at the Plaza before, but all of a sudden my dad is like, "Mia, I want you to know the truth. I think you’re old enough now, and the fact is, now that I can’t have any more children, this will have a tremendous impact on your life, and it’s only fair I tell you. I am the prince of Genovia."
And I was all, "Really, Dad?"Hiccup.
"Your mother has always felt very strongly that there wasn’t any reason for you to know, and I agreed with her. I had a very . . . well,unsatisfactory childhood—"
He’s not kidding. Life with Grandmère couldn’t have been anypicque-nicque.Hiccup.
"I agreed with your mother that a palace is no place to raise a child." Then he started muttering to himself, which he always does whenever I tell him I’m a vegetarian, or the subject of Mom comes up. "Of course, at the time I didn’t think she intended to raise you in abohemian artist’s loft inGreenwich Village, but I will admit that it doesn’t seem to have done you any harm. In fact, I think growing up in New York City instilled you with a healthy amount of skepticism about the human race at large—"
Hiccup.And he had never evenmet Lana Weinberger.
"—which is something I didn’t gain until college, and I believe is partly responsible for the fact that I have such a difficult time establishing close interpersonal relationships with women—"
Hiccup.
"What I’m trying to say is, your mother and I thought by not telling you we were doing you a favor. The fact was, we never envisioned that an occasion might arise in which you might succeed the throne. I was only twenty-five when you were born. I felt certain I would meet another woman, marry her, and have more children. But now, unfortunately, that will never be. So, the fact is, you, Mia, are the heir to the throne of Genovia."
I hiccuped again. This was getting embarrassing. These weren’t little ladylike hiccups, either. They were huge, and made my whole body go sproinging up out of my chair like I was some kind of five-foot-nine frog. They were loud, too. I meanreally loud. The German tourists kept looking over, all giggly and stuff. I knew what my dad was saying was superserious, but I couldn’t help it, I just kept hiccuping! I tried holding my breath and counting to thirty—I only got to ten before I hiccuped again. I put a sugar cube on my tongue and let it dissolve. No go. I even tried to scare myself, thinking about my mom and Mr. Gianini French-kissing—eventhat didn’t work.
Finally, my dad was like, "Mia? Mia, are you listening? Have you heard a word I said?"
I said, "Dad, can I be excused for a minute?"
He looked sort of pained, like his stomach hurt him, and he slumped back in his chair in this defeated way, but he said, "Go ahead," and gave me five dollars to give to the washroom attendant, which I of course put in my pocket. Five bucks for the washroom attendant! Geez, my whole allowance is ten bucks a week!
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the ladies’ room at the Plaza, but it’s like totally the nicest one in Manhattan. It’s all pink, and there are mirrors and little couches everywhere, in case you look at yourself and feel the urge to faint from your beauty or something. Anyway, I banged in there, hiccuping like a maniac, and all these women in these fancy hairdos looked up, annoyed at the interruption. I guess I made them mess up their lip liner or something.
I went into one of the stalls, each of which, besides a toilet, has its own private sink with a huge mirror and a dressing table with a little stool with tassels hanging off it. I sat on the stool and concentrated on not hiccuping anymore. Instead, I concentrated on what my dad had said:
He’s the prince of Genovia.
A lot of things are beginning to make sense now. Like how when I fly to France I just walk onto the plane from the terminal, but when I get there I’m escorted off the plane before everyone else and get taken away by limo to meet my dad at Miragnac.
I always thought that was because he had frequent flyer privileges.
I guess it’s because he’s a prince.
And then there’s that fact that whenever Grandmère takes me shopping in Genovia she always takes me either before the stores are officially open or after they are officially closed. She calls ahead to insure we will be let in, and no one has ever said no. In Manhattan, if my mother had tried to do this, the clerks at the Gap would have fallen over from laughing so hard.
And when I’m at Miragnac, I notice that we never go out to eat anywhere. We always have our meals there, or sometimes we go to the neighboring chateau, Mirabeau, which is owned by these nasty British people who have a lot of snotty kids who say things like "That’s rot" and "You’re a wanker" to one another. One of the younger girls, Nicole, is sort of my friend, but then one night she told me this story about how she was Frenching a boy and I didn’t know what Frenching was. I was only eleven at the time, which is no excuse, because so was she. I just thought Frenching was some weird British thing, like toad-in-the-hole, or air raids, or something. So then I mentioned it at the dinner table in front of Nicole’s parents, and after that all those kids stopped talking to me.
I wonder if the Brits know that my dad is the prince of Genovia. I bet they do. God, they must have thought I was mentally retarded or something.
Most people have never heard of Genovia. I know when we had to do our fact sheets, none of the other kids ever had. Neither had my mother, she says, before she met my dad. Nobody famous ever came from there. Nobody who was born there ever invented anything, or wrote anything, or became a movie star. A lot of Genovians, like my grandpa, fought against the Nazis in World War II, but other than that, they aren’t really known for anything.
Still, people whohave heard of Genovia like to go there because it’s so beautiful. It’s very sunny nearly all the time, with the snow-capped Alps in the background and the crystal-blue Mediterranean in front of it. It has a lot of hills, some of which are as steep as the ones in San Francisco, and most of which have olive trees growing on them. The main export of Genovia, I remember from my fact sheet, is olive oil, the really expensive kind my mom says only to use for salad dressing.
There’s a palace there, too. It’s kind of famous because they filmed a movie there once, a movie about the three Musketeers. I’ve never been inside, but we’ve driven by it before, me and Grandmère. It’s got all these turrets and flying buttresses and stuff.
Funny how Grandmère never mentioned havinglived there all those times we drove past it.
My hiccups are gone. I think it’s safe to go back to the Palm Court.
I’m going to give the washroom attendant a dollar, even though she didn’t attend me.
Hey, I can afford it: My dad’s a prince!
Later on Thursday,
Penguin House, Central Park Zoo
I’m so freaked out I can barely write, plus people keep bumping my elbow, and it’s dark in here, but whatever. I have to get this down exactly the way it happened. Otherwise, when I wake up tomorrow I might think it was just a nightmare.
But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was REAL.
I’m not going to tell anybody, not even Lilly. Lilly would NOT understand. NOBODY would understand. Because nobody I know has ever been in this situation before. Nobody ever went to bed one night as one person and then woke up the next morning to find out that she was somebody completely different.
When I got back to our table after hiccuping in the ladies’ room at the Plaza, I saw that the German tourists had been replaced by some Japanese tourists. This was an improvement. They were much quieter. My dad was on his cellular phone when I sat back down. He was talking to my mom, I realized right away. He had on the expression he wears only when he is talking to her. He was saying, "Yes, I told her. No, she doesn’t seem upset." He looked at me. "Are you upset?"
I said, "No," because I wasn’t upset—not THEN.
He said, into the phone, "She says no." He listened for a minute, then he looked at me again. "Do you want your mother to come up here and help to explain things?"
I shook my head. "No. She has to finish that mixed-media piece for the Kelly Tate Gallery. They want it by next Tuesday."
My dad repeated this to my mom. I heard her grumble back. She is always very grumbly when I remind her that she has paintings due by a certain time. My mom likes to work when the muses move her. Since my dad pays most of our bills, this is not usually a problem, but it is not a very responsible way for an adult to behave, even if she is an artist. I swear, if I ever met my mom’s muses, I’d give ’em such swift kicks in the toga they wouldn’t know what hit them.
Finally my dad hung up and then he looked at me. "Better?" he asked.
So I guess he had noticed the hiccups after all. "Better," I said.
"Do you really understand what I’m telling you, Mia?"
I nodded. "You are the prince of Genovia."
"Yes . . . " he said, like there was more.
I didn’t know what else to say. So I tried, "Grandpère was the prince of Genovia before you?"
He said, "Yes . . . "
"So Grandmère is . . . what?"
"The dowager princess."
I winced. Ew. That explained a whole lot about Grandmère.
Dad could tell he had me stumped. He kept on looking at me all hopeful like. Finally, after I tried just smiling at him innocently for a while, and that didn’t work, I slumped over and said, "Okay. What?"
He looked disappointed. "Mia, don’t you know?"
I had my head on the table. You aren’t supposed to do that at the Plaza, but I hadn’t noticed Ivana Trump looking our way. "No . . . " I said. "I guess not. Know what?"
"You’re not Mia Thermopolis anymore, honey," he said. Because I was born out of wedlock, and my mom doesn’t believe in what she calls the cult of the patriarchy, she gave me her last name instead of my dad’s.
I raised my head at that. "I’m not?" I said, blinking a few times. "Then who am I?"
And he went, kind of sadly, "You’re Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, Princess of Genovia."
Okay.
WHAT? A PRINCESS?? ME???
Yeah. Right.
This is how NOT a princess I am. I am so NOT a princess that when my dad started telling me that I was one I totally started crying. I could see my reflection in this big gold mirror across the room, and my face had gotten all splotchy, like it does in PE whenever we play dodge ball and I get hit. I looked at my face in that big mirror and I was like,This is the face of a princess?
You should see what I look like. You never saw anyone who looked LESS like a princess than I do. I mean, I have really bad hair that isn’t curly or straight; it’s sort of triangular, so I have to wear it really short or I look like a Yield sign. And it isn’t blond or brunette, it’s in the middle, the sort of color they call mouse brown, or dishwater blond. Attractive, huh? And I have a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look like skis. Lilly says my only attractive feature is my eyes, which are gray, but right then they were all squinty and red-looking since I was trying not to cry.
I mean, princesses don’t cry, right?
Then my dad reached out and started patting my hand. Okay, I love my dad, but he just has no clue. He kept saying how sorry he was. I couldn’t say anything in reply because I was afraid if I talked I’d cry harder. He kept on saying how it wasn’t that bad, that I’d like living at the palace in Genovia with him, and that I could come back to visit my little friends as often as I wanted.
That’s when I lost it.
Not only am I a princess, but I have to MOVE???
I stopped crying almost right away. Because then I got mad. Really mad. I don’t get mad all that often, because of my fear of confrontation and all, but when Ido get mad, look out.
"I am NOT moving to Genovia," I said in this really loud voice. I know it was loud because all the Japanese tourists turned around and looked at me, and then started whispering to one another.
My dad looked kind of shocked. The last time I yelled at him had been years ago, when he agreed with Grandmère that I ought to eat some foie gras. I don’t care if itis a delicacy in France; I’m not eating anything that once walked around and quacked.
"But Mia," my dad said in his Now-let’s-be-reasonable voice, "I thought you understood—"
"All I understand," I said, "is that youlied to me my whole life. Why should I come live withyou?"
I realize this was a completelyParty of Five kind of thing to say, and I’m sorry to say that I followed it up with some prettyParty of Five behavior. I stood up real fast, knocking over my big gold chair, and rushed out of there, nearly bowling over the snobby doorman.
I think my dad tried to chase me, but I can run pretty fast when I want to. Mr. Wheeton is always trying to get me to go out for track, but that’s like such a joke, because I hate running for no reason. A letter on a stupid jacket is no reason to run, as far as I’m concerned.
Anyway, I ran down the street, past the stupid touristy horses and carriages, past the big fountain with the gold statues in it, past all the traffic outside of F.A.O. Schwarz, right into Central Park, where it was getting kind of dark and cold and spooky and stuff, but I didn’t care. Nobody was going to attack me because I was this five-foot-nine girl running in combat boots, with a big backpack with bumper stickers on it that said stuff like support greenpeace and i brake for animals. Nobody messes with a girl in combat boots, particularly when she’s also a vegetarian.
After a while I got tired of running, and then I tried to figure out where I could go, since I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I knew I couldn’t go to Lilly’s. She is vehemently opposed to any form of government that is not by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. She’s always said that when sovereignty is vested in a single person whose right to rule is hereditary, the principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community are irrevocably lost. This is why, today, real power has passed from reigning monarchs to constitutional assemblies, making royals such as Queen Elizabeth mere symbols of national unity.
At least, that’s what she said in her oral report in World Civ the other day.
And I guess I kind of agree with Lilly, especially about Prince Charles—he did treat Diana like dirt—but my dad isn’t like that. Yeah, he plays polo and all, but he would never dream of subjecting anyone to taxation without representation.
Still, I was pretty sure the fact that the people of Genovia don’t have to pay taxes wasn’t going to make any difference to Lilly.
I knew the first thing my dad would do was call Mom, and she’d be all worried. I hate making my mom worry. Even though she can be very irresponsible at times, it’s only with things like bills and the groceries. She’s never irresponsible aboutme. Like, I have friends whose parents don’t even remember sometimes to give them subway fare. I have friends who tell their parents they’re going to So-and-So’s apartment and then instead they go out drinking, and their parents never find out because they don’t even check with the other kid’s parents.
My mom’s not like that. She ALWAYS checks.
So I knew it wasn’t fair to run off like that and make her worry. I didn’t care much then about what my dad thought. I was pretty much hating him by then. But I just had to be alone for a little while. I mean, it takes some getting used to, finding out you’re a princess. I guess some girls might like it, but not me. I’ve never been good at girly stuff, you know, like putting on makeup and wearing panty hose and stuff. I mean, I cando it, if I have to, but I’d rather not.
Muchrather not.
Anyway, I don’t know how, but my feet sort of knew where they were going, and before I knew it I was at the zoo.
I love the Central Park Zoo. I always have, since I was a little kid. It’s way better than the Bronx Zoo, because it’s really small and cozy, and the animals are much friendlier, especially the seals and the polar bears. I love polar bears. At the Central Park Zoo, they have this one polar bear, and all he does all day long is the backstroke. I swear! He was on the news once because this animal psychologist was worried he was under too much stress. It must suck to have people looking at you all day. But then they bought him some toys, and after that he was all right. He just kicks back in his enclosure—they don’t have cages at the Central Park Zoo, they have enclosures—and watches you watching him. Sometimes he holds a ball while he does it. I love that bear.
So after I forked over a couple of dollars to get in—that’s the other good thing about the zoo: it’s cheap—I paid a little call on the polar bear. He appeared to be doing fine. Much better than I was, at the moment. I mean,his dad hadn’t told him he was the heir to the throne of anywhere. I wondered where that polar bear had come from. I hoped he was from Iceland.
After a while it got too crowded at the polar bear enclosure, so then I went into the penguin house. It smells kind of bad in here, but it’s fun. There are these windows that look underwater, so you can see the penguins swimming around, sliding on the rocks and having a good penguin time. Little kids put their hands on the glass, and when a penguin swims toward them, they start screaming. It totally cracks me up. There’s a bench you can sit on, too, and that’s where I’m sitting now, writing this. You get used to the smell after a while. I guess you can get used to anything.
Oh my God, I can’t believe I just wrote that! I will NEVER get used to being Princess Amelia Renaldo! I don’t even know who that is! It sounds like the name of some stupid line of makeup, or of somebody from a Disney movie who’s been missing and just recovered her memory, or something.
What am I going to do? I CAN’T move to Genovia, I just CAN’T!! Who would look after Fat Louie? My mom can’t. She forgets to feedherself, let alone aCAT.
I’m sure they won’t let me have a cat in the palace. At least, not a cat like Louie, who weighs twenty-five pounds and eats socks. He’d scare all the ladies-in-waiting.
Oh, God.What am I going to do?
If Lana Weinberger finds out about this, I’m dead.
Even Later on Thursday
Of course, I couldn’t hide out in the penguin house forever. Eventually, they flicked the lights and said the zoo was closing. I put my journal away and filed out with everybody else. I grabbed a downtown bus and went home, where I was sure I was going to get it BIG TIME from my mom.
What I didn’t count on was getting it from BOTH my parents at the same time. This was a first.
"Where have you been, young lady?" my mom wanted to know. She was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, the telephone between them.
My dad said, at the exact same time, "We were worried sick!"
I thought I was in for the grounding of a lifetime, but all they wanted to know was whether I was all right. I assured them that I was and apologized for going all Jennifer Love Hewitt on them. I just needed to be alone, I said.
I was really worried they’d start in on me, but they totally didn’t. My mom did try to make me eat some Ramen, but I wouldn’t, because it was beef flavored. And then my dad offered to send his driver to Nobu to pick up some blackened sea bass, but I was like, "Really, Dad, I just want to go to bed." Then my mom started feeling my head and stuff, thinking I was sick. This nearly made me start crying again. I guess my dad recognized my expression from the Plaza, since all of a sudden he was like, "Helen, just leave her alone."
To my surprise, she did. And so I went into my bathroom and closed the door and took a long, hot bath, then got into my favorite pajamas, the cool red flannel ones, found Fat Louie where he was trying to hide under the futon couch (he doesn’t like my dad so much), and went to bed.
Before I fell asleep, I could hear my dad talking to my mom in the kitchen for a long, long time. His voice was rumbly, like thunder. It sort of reminded me of Captain Picard’s voice onStar Trek: The Next Generation.
My dad actually has a lot in common with Captain Picard. You know, he’s white and bald and has to rule over a small populace.
Except that Captain Picard always makes everything okay by the end of the episode, and I sincerely doubt everything will be okay for me.
Friday, October 3, Homeroom
Today when I woke up, the pigeons that live on the fire escape outside my window were cooing away (Fat Louie was on the windowsill—well, as much of him as could fit on the windowsill, anyway—watching them), and the sun was shining, and I actually got up on time and didn’t hit the snooze button seven thousand times. I took a shower and didn’t cut my legs shaving them, found a fairly unwrinkled blouse at the bottom of my closet, and even got my hair to look sort of halfway passable. I was in a good mood. It wasFriday. Friday is my favorite day, besides Saturday and Sunday. Fridays always mean two days—two glorious, relaxing days—of NO Algebra are coming my way.
And then I walked out into the kitchen and there was all this pink light coming down through the skylight right on my mom, who was wearing her best kimono and making French toast using Egg Beaters instead of real eggs, even though I’m no longer ovo-lacto since I realized eggs aren’t fertilized so they could never have been baby chicks anyway.
And I was all set to thank her for thinking of me, and then I heard this rustle.
And there was my DAD sitting at the dining room table (well, really it’s just a table, since we don’t have a dining room, but whatever), readingThe New York Times and wearing a suit.
Asuit. At seven o’clock in the morning.
And then I remembered. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it:
I’m aprincess.
Oh my God. Everything good about my day just went right out the window after that.
As soon as he saw me, my dad was all, "Ah, Mia."
I knew I was in for it. He only says "Ah, Mia"when he’s about to give me a big lecture.
He folded his paper all carefully and laid it down. My dad always folds papers carefully, making the edges all neat. My mom never does this. She usually crumples the pages up and leaves them, out of order, on the futon couch or next to the toilet. This kind of thing drives my father insane and is probably the real reason why they never got married.
My mom, I saw, had set the table with our best Kmart plates, the ones with the blue stripes on them, and the green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses from Ikea. She had even put a bunch of fake sunflowers in the middle of the table in a yellow vase. She had done all that to cheer me up, I know, and she’d probably gotten up really early to do it, too. But instead of cheering me up, it just made me sadder.
Because I bet they don’t use green plastic cactus-shaped margarita glasses for breakfast at the palace in Genovia.
"We need to talk, Mia," my dad said. This is how his worst lectures always start. Except this time he looked at me kind of funny before he started. "What’s wrong with your hair?"
I put my hand up to my head. "Why?" I thought my hair looked good, for a change.
"Nothing is wrong with her hair, Phillipe," my mom said. She usually tries to ward off my dad’s lectures, if she can. "Come and sit down, Mia, and have some breakfast. I even heated up the syrup for the French toast, the way you like it."
I appreciated this gesture on my mom’s part. I really did. But I was not going to sit down and talk about my future in Genovia. I mean, come on. So I was all, "Uh, I’d love to, really, but I gotta go. I have a test in World Civ today, and I promised Lilly I’d meet her to go over our notes together—"
"Sit down."
Boy, my dad can really sound like a starship captain in the Federation when he wants to.
I sat. My mom shoveled some French toast onto my plate. I poured syrup over it and took a bite, just to be polite. It tasted like cardboard.
"Mia," my mom said. She was still trying to ward off my dad’s lecture. "I know how upset you must be about all of this. But really, it isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be."
Oh, right. All of a sudden you tell me I’m a princess, and I’m supposed to be happy about it?
"I mean," my mom went on, "most girls would probably be delighted to find out their father is a prince!"
No girls I know. Actually, that’s not true. Lana Weinberger would probablylove to be a princess. In fact, she already thinks she is one.
"Just think of all the lovely things you could have if you went to live in Genovia." My mom’s face totally lit up as she started listing the lovely things I could have if I went to live in Genovia, but her voice sounded strange, as if she were playing a mom on TV or something. "Like a car! You know how impractical it is to have a car here in the city. But in Genovia, when you turn sixteen, I’m sure Dad will buy you a—"
I pointed out that there are enough problems with pollution in Europe without my contributing to it. Diesel emissions are one of the largest contributors to the destruction of the ozone layer.
"But you’ve always wanted a horse, haven’t you? Well, in Genovia you could have one. A nice gray one with spots on its back—"
That hurt.
"Mom," I said, my eyes all filling up with tears. I completely couldn’t help it. Suddenly, I was bawling all over again. "What are youdoing? Do youwant me to go live with Dad? Is that it? Are you tired of me or something? Do you want me to go live with Dad so you and Mr. Gianini can . . . can . . . "
I couldn’t go on because I started crying so hard. But by then my mom was crying, too. She jumped up out of her chair and came around the end of the table and started hugging me, saying, "Oh, no, honey! How could you think something like that?" She stopped sounding like a TV mom. "I just want what’s best for you!"
"As do I," my dad said, looking annoyed. He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning back in his chair, watching us in an irritated way.
"Well, what’s best for me is to stay right here and finish high school," I told him. "And then I’m going to join Greenpeace and help save the whales."
My dad looked evenmore irritated at that. "You arenot joining Greenpeace," he said.
"I am, too," I said. It was totally hard to talk, because I was crying and all, but I told him, "I’m going to go to Iceland to save the baby seals, too."
"You most certainly are not." My dad didn’t just look annoyed. Now he looked mad. "You are going to go to college. Vassar, I think. Maybe Sarah Lawrence."
That made me cry even more.
But before I could say anything, my mom held up a hand and was like, "Phillipe, don’t. We aren’t accomplishing anything here. Mia has to get to school, anyway. She’s already late—"
I started looking around for my backpack and coat real fast. "Yeah," I said. "I gotta renew my MetroCard."
My dad made this weird French noise he makes sometimes. It’s halfway between a snort and a sigh. It kind of sounds likePfuit! Then he said, "Lars will drive you."
I told my dad that this was unnecessary since I meet Lilly every day at Astor Place, where we catch the uptown 6 train together.
"Lars can pick up your little friend, too."
I looked at my mom. She was looking at my dad. Lars is my dad’s driver. He goes everywhere my dad goes. For as long as I’ve known my dad—okay, my whole life—he’s always had a driver, usually a big beefy guy who used to work for the president of Israel or somebody like that.
Now that I think about it, of course I realize these guys aren’t really drivers at all but bodyguards.
Duh.
Okay, so the last thing I wanted was for my dad’s bodyguard to drive me to school. How would I ever explain it to Lilly?Oh, don’t mind him, Lilly. He’s just my dad’s chauffeur. Yeah, right. The only person at Albert Einstein High School who gets dropped off by a chauffeur is this totally rich Saudi Arabian girl named Tina Hakim Baba, whose dad owns some big oil company, and everybody makes fun of her because her parents are all worried she’ll get kidnapped between Seventy-fifth and Madison, where our school is, and Seventy-fifth and Fifth, where she lives. She even has a bodyguard who follows her around from class to class and talks on a walkie-talkie to the chauffeur. This seems a little extreme, if you ask me.
But Dad was totally rigid on the driver thing. It’s like now that I’m an official princess there’s all this concern for my welfare. Yesterday, when I was Mia Thermopolis, it was perfectly okay for me to ride the subway. Today, now that I’m Princess Amelia, forget it.
Well, whatever. It didn’t seem worth arguing over. I mean, there are way worse things I have to worry about.
Like which country am I going to be living in in the near future.
As I was leaving—my dad made Lars come up to the loft to walk me down to the car; it was totally embarrassing—I overheard my dad say to my mom, "All right, Helen. Who’s this Gianini fellow Mia was talking about?"
Oops.
ab=a +b
solve forb
ab-b =a
b(a- 1) =a
More Friday, Algebra
Lilly could tell right away something was up.
Oh, she swallowed the whole story I fed her about Lars: "Oh, my dad’s in town, and he’s got this driver, and you know . . . "
But I couldn’t tell her about the princess thing. I mean, all I kept thinking about was how disgusted Lilly sounded during that part in her oral report when she mentioned how Christian monarchs used to consider themselves appointed agents of divine will and thus were responsible not to the people they governed but to God alone, even though my dad hardly ever even goes to church, except when Grandmère makes him.
Lilly believed me about Lars, but she was still all over me with the crying thing. She was like, "Why are your eyes so red and squinty? You’ve been crying. Why were you crying? Did something happen? What happened? Did you get another F in something?"
I just shrugged and tried to look out the passenger window at the uninspiring view of the East Village crackhouses, which we had to drive by to get to the FDR. "It’s nothing," I said. "PMS."
"It is not PMS. You had your period last week. I remember because you borrowed a pad from me after PE, and then you ate two whole packs of Yodels at lunch." Sometimes I wish Lilly’s memory weren’t so good. "So spill. Did Louie eat another sock?"
First of all, it was like totally embarrassing to discuss my menstrual cycle in front of my dad’s bodyguard. I mean, Lars is kind of a Baldwin. He was concentrating really hard on driving, though, and I don’t know if he could hear us from the front seat, but it was embarrassing, just the same.
"It’s nothing," I whispered. "Just my dad.You know."
"Oh," Lilly said in her normal voice. Have I mentioned that Lilly’s normal voice is really loud? "You mean the infertility thing? Is he still bummed out about that? Gawd, doeshe ever need to self-actualize."
Lilly then went on to describe something she called the Jungian tree of self-actualization. She says my dad is way on the bottom branches, and he won’t be able to reach the top of the thing until he accepts himself as he is and stops obsessing over his inability to sire more offspring.
I guess that’s part of my problem. I’m way at the bottom of the self-actualization tree. Like, underneath the roots of it, practically.
But now that I’m sitting here in Algebra, things don’t seem so bad, really. I mean, I thought about it all through Homeroom, and I finally realized something:
They can’tmake me be princess.
They really can’t. I mean, this is America, for crying out loud. Here, you can be anything you want to be. At least that’s what Mrs. Holland was always telling us last year, when we studied U.S. History. So, if I can be whatever I want to be, I cannot be a princess. Nobody canmake me be a princess, not even my dad, if I don’t want to be one.
Right?
So when I get home tonight, I’ll just tell my dad thanks, but no thanks. I’ll just be plain old Mia for now.
Geez. Mr. Gianini just called on me, and I totally had no idea what he was talking about, because of course I was writing in this book instead of paying attention. My face feels like it’s on fire. Lana is laughing her head off, of course. She is such a wanker.
What does he keep picking onme for, anyway? He should know by now that I don’t know the quadratic formula from a hole in the ground. He’s only picking on me because of my mom. He wants to make it look as if he’s treating me the same as everybody else in the class.
Well, I’mnot the same as everybody else in the class.
What do I need to know Algebra for, anyway? They don’t use Algebra in Greenpeace.
And you can bet you don’t need it if you’re a princess. So however things turn out, I’m covered.
Cool.
solvex =a +aby fory
x-a =aby
Really Late on Friday,
Lilly Moscovitz’s Bedroom
Okay, so I blew off Mr. Gianini’s help session after school. Iknow I shouldn’t have. Believe me, Lilly let me know I shouldn’t have. I know he has these help sessions just for people like me, who are flunking. I know he does it in his own spare time and doesn’t even get paid overtime for it or anything. But if I won’t ever need Algebra in any foreseeable future career, why do I need to go?
I asked Lilly if it would be okay if I spent the night at her house tonight and she said only if I promised to stop acting like such a head case.
I promised, even though I don’t think I’m acting like a head case.
But when I called my mom from the pay phone in the lobby after school to ask her if it was okay if I stayed overnight at the Moscovitzes, she was all, "Um, actually, Mia, your father was really hoping that when you got home tonight we could have another talk."
Oh, great.
I told my mom that although there was nothing I wanted to do more than have another talk, I was very concerned about Lilly, whose stalker was recently released from Bellevue again. Ever since Lilly started her cable access TV show, this guy named Norman has been calling in, asking her to take off her shoes. According to the Drs. Moscovitz, Norman is a fetishist. His fixation is feet—in particular, Lilly’s feet. He sends stuff to her care of the show, CDs and stuffed animals and things like that, and writes that there’ll be more where that came from if Lilly would just take off her shoes on air. So what Lilly does is, she takes off her shoes, all right, but then she throws a blanket over her legs and kicks her feet around under it and goes, "Look, Norman, you freak! I took my shoes off! Thanks for the CDs, sucker!"
This angered Norman so much that he started wandering around the Village looking for Lilly. Everyone knows Lilly lives in the Village, since we filmed a very popular episode where Lilly borrowed the pricing gun from Grand Union and stood on the corner of Bleecker and La Guardia and told all the European tourists wandering around NoHo that if they wore a Grand Union price sticker on their foreheads they could get a free latte from Dean & DeLuca (a surprising amount of them believed her).
Anyway, one day a few weeks ago Norman the foot fetishist found us in the park and started chasing us around, waving twenty dollar bills and trying to get us to take off our shoes. This was very entertaining, and hardly scary at all, especially because we just ran right up to the command post on Washington Square South and Thompson Street, where the Sixth Precinct has been parking this enormous trailer so they can secretly spy on the drug dealers. We told the police that this weird guy was trying to assault us, and you should have seen it: About twenty undercover guys (even a guy I thought was an old homeless man asleep on a bench) jumped on Norman and dragged him, screaming, off to the mental ward!
I always have such a good time with Lilly.
Anyway, Lilly’s parents told her Norman just got out of Bellevue and that if she sees him she’s not to torment him anymore, because he’s just a poor obsessive-compulsive with possible schizophrenic tendencies.
Lilly’s devoting tomorrow’s show to her feet. She’s going to model every single pair of shoes she owns, but not once show her bare feet. She hopes that this will drive Norman over the edge and he’ll do something weirder than ever, like get a gun and shoot at us.
I’m not scared, though. Norman has kind of thick glasses, and I bet he couldn’t actually hit anything, even with a machine gun, which even a lunatic like Norman is allowed to buy in this country thanks to our totally unrestrictive gun laws, which Michael Moscovitz says in his webzine will ultimately result in the demise of democracy as we know it.
My mom was totally not buying this, though. She was all, "Mia, I appreciate the fact that you want to help your friend through this difficult period with her stalker, but I really think you have more pressing responsibilities here at home."
And I was all, "What responsibilities?" thinking she was talking about the litter box, which I had totally cleaned two days ago.
And she was like, "Responsibility toward your father and me."
I just about lost it right there. Responsibilities?Responsibilities? She’s tellingme about responsibilities? When is the last time it ever occurred toher to drop off the laundry, let alone pick it up again? When is the last timeshe remembered to buy Q-Tips or toilet paper or milk?
And did she ever happen to think to mention, in all of my fourteen years, that I might possibly end up being the princess of Genovia someday???
Shethinks she needs to tellme about my responsibilities?
HA!!!!!!
I nearly hung up on her. But Lilly was sort of standing nearby, practicing her house manager duties by switching on and off the lights in the school lobby. Since I had promised not to act like a head case, and hanging up on my mother would definitely fall into the head case category, I said in this really patient voice, "Don’t worry, Mom, I won’t forget to stop at Genovese on my way home tomorrow and pick up new vacuum cleaner bags."
Andthen I hung up.
HOMEWORK
Algebra: problems 1–12, pg. 119 English: proposal World Civ: questions at end of Chapter 4 G & T: none French: useavoir in neg. sentence, rd. lessons one to three, pas de plus Biology: none
Saturday, October 4,
Early, Still Lilly’s Place
Why do I always have such a good time when I spend the night at Lilly’s? I mean, it’s not like they’ve got stuff that I don’t have. In fact, my mom and I have better stuff. The Moscovitzes only get a couple of movie channels, and because I took advantage of the last Time Warner Cable bonus offer, we have all of them, Cinemaxand HBOand Showtime, for the low, low rate of $19.99 per month.
Plus we have way better people to spy on through our windows, like Ronnie, who used to be a Ronald but is now called Ronette, and who has a lot of big fancy parties; and that skinny German couple who wear black all the time, even in summer, and never pull down their blinds. On Fifth Avenue, where the Moscovitzes live, there’snobody good to look at: Just other rich psychoanalysts and their children. Let me tell you, you don’t see anything good throughtheir windows.
But it’s like every time I spend the night here, even if all Lilly and I do is hang out in the kitchen eating macaroons left over from Rosh Hashanah, I have such a great time. Maybe that’s because Maya, the Moscovitzes’ Dominican maid, never forgets to buy orange juice, and she always remembers that I don’t like the pulpy kind, and sometimes, if she knows I’m staying over, she’ll pick up a vegetable lasagna from Balducci’s, instead of a meat one, especially for me, like she did last night.
Or maybe it’s because I never find moldy old containers of anything in the Moscovitzes’ refrigerator. Maya throws away anything that’s even one day past its expiration date. Even sour cream that still has the protective plastic around the lid. Even cans of Tab.
And the Drs. Moscovitz never forget to pay the electricity bill. Con Ed has never once shut downtheir power in the middle of aStar Trek movie marathon. And Lilly’s mom, she always talks about normal stuff, like what a great deal she got on Calvin Klein panty hose at Bergdorf’s.
Not that I don’t love my mom or anything. I totally do. I just wish she could be more of a mom and less of an artist.
And I wish my dad could be more like Lilly’s dad, who always wants to make me an omelet because he thinks I’m too skinny, and who walks around in his old college sweatpants when he doesn’t have to go to his office to analyze anybody.
Dr. Moscovitz wouldnever wear a suit at seven in the morning.
Not that I don’t love my dad. I do, I guess. I just don’t understand how he could let something like this happen. He’s usually so organized. How could he have let himself become a prince?
I just don’t understand it.
The best thing, I guess, about going to Lilly’s is that while I’m there I don’t even have to think about things like how I’m flunking Algebra or how I’m the heir to the throne of a small European principality. I can just relax and enjoy some real homemade Poppin Fresh Cinnamon Buns and watch Pavlov, Michael’s sheltie, try to herd Maya back into the kitchen every time she tries to comes out.
Last night wastotally fun. The Drs. Moscovitz were out—they had to go to a benefit at the Puck Building for the homosexual children of survivors of the Holocaust—so Lilly and I made this huge vat of popcorn smothered in butter and climbed into her parents’ giant canopy bed and watched all the James Bond movies in a row. We were able to definitively determine that Pierce Brosnan was the skinniest James Bond, Sean Connery the hairiest, and Roger Moore the most tan. None of the James Bonds took off their shirts enough for us to decide who had the best chest, but I think probably Timothy Dalton.
I like chest hair. I think.
It was sort of ironic that while I was trying to decide this Lilly’s brother came into the room. He had on a shirt, though. He looked kind of annoyed. He said my dad was on the phone. My dad was all mad because he’d been trying to get through for hours, only Michael was on the Internet answering fan mail for his webzine,Crackhead, so my dad kept getting a busy signal.
I must have looked like I was going to throw up or something, because after a minute Michael said, "Okay, don’t worry about it, Thermopolis. I’ll tell him you and Lilly already went to bed," which is a lie my mother would never believe, but it must have gone over pretty well with my dad, since Michael came back and reported that my dad had apologized for calling so late (it was only eleven) and that he’d speak to me in the morning.
Great. I can’t wait.
I guess I must have still looked like I was going to throw up, because Michael called his dog and made him get into bed with us, even though pets aren’t allowed in the Drs. Moscovitzes’ room. Pavlov crawled into my lap and started licking my face, which he’ll only do to people he really trusts. Then Michael sat down to watch the movies with us, and in the interest of science, Lilly asked him which Bond girls were most attractive to him, the blonds who always needed James Bond to rescue them or the brunettes who were always pulling guns on him, and Michael said he couldn’t resist a girl with a weapon, which got us started on his two favorite TV shows of all time,Xena :Warrior Princess andBuffy the Vampire Slayer.
So then, not really in the interest of science but more out of plain curiosity, I asked Michael if it was the end of the world and he had to repopulate the planet but he could only choose one life mate, who would it be, Xena or Buffy?
After telling me how weird I was for thinking of something like that, Michael chose Buffy, and then Lilly asked me if I had to choose between Harrison Ford or George Clooney who would it be, and I said Harrison Ford even though he’s so old, but the Harrison Ford fromIndiana Jones, notStar Wars, and then Lilly said she’d choose Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan in those Tom Clancy movies, and then Michael goes, "Who would you choose, Harrison Ford or Leonardo di Caprio?" and we both chose Harrison Ford because Leonardo is so passé, and then he went, "Who would you choose, Harrison Ford or Josh Richter?" and Lilly said Harrison Ford, because he used to be a carpenter, and if it was the end of the world he could build her a house, but I said Josh Richter, because he’d live longer—Harrison is like SIXTY—and be able to give me a hand with the kids.
Then Michael started saying all this totally unfair stuff about Josh Richter, like how in the face of nuclear armageddon he’d probably show cowardice, but Lilly said fear of new things is not an accurate measure of one’s potential for growth, with which I agreed. Then Michael said we were both idiots if we thought Josh Richter would ever give us so much as the time of day, that he only liked girls like Lana Weinberger, who put out, to which Lilly responded that she would put out for Josh Richter if he was able to meet certain conditions, like bathing beforehand in an antibacterial solution and wearing three condoms coated in spermicidal fluid during the act, in case one broke and one slipped off.
Then Michael asked me if I would put out for Josh Richter, and I had to think about it for a minute. Losing your virginity is a really big step, and you have to do it with the right person or else you could be screwed up for the rest of your life, like the women in Dr. Moscovitz’s Over Forty and Still Single group, which meets every other Tuesday. So after I’d thought about it, I said I would put out for Josh Richter, but only if:
1. We’d been dating for at least a year. 2. He pledged his undying love to me. 3. He took me to seeBeauty and the Beast on Broadway and didn’t make fun of it.
Michael said the first two sounded all right, but if the third one was an example of the kind of boyfriend I expected to get, I’d be a virgin for a long, long time. He said he didn’t know anyone with an ounce of testosterone who could watchBeauty and the Beast on Broadway without projectile vomiting. But he’s wrong, because my dad definitely has testosterone—at least one testicle full—and he’s never projectile vomited at the show.
Then Lilly asked Michael who he would choose if he had to, me or Lana Weinberger, and he said, "Mia, of course," but I’m sure he was just saying that because I was right there in the room and he didn’t want to dis me to my face.
I wish Lilly wouldn’t do things like that.
But she kept on doing it, wanting to know who Michael would choose, me or Madonna, and me or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (he chose me over Madonna, but Buffy won, hands down, over me).
And then Lilly wanted to know who I would choose, Michael or Josh Richter. I pretended to be seriously thinking about it, when to my total relief the Drs. Moscovitz came home and started yelling at us for letting Pavlov in their room and eating popcorn in their bed.
So then later after Lilly and I had cleaned up all the popcorn and gone back to her room, she asked me again who I would choose, Josh Richter or her brother, and I had to say Josh Richter, because Josh Richter is the hottest boy in our whole school, maybe the whole world, and I am completely and totally in love with him, and not just because of the way his blond hair sometimes falls into his eyes when he’s bent over, looking for stuff in his locker, but because I know that behind that jock facade he maintains he is a deeply sensitive and caring person. I could tell by the way he said hey to me that day in Bigelows.
But I couldn’t help thinking if itreally were the end of the world, it might be better to be with Michael, even if he isn’t so hot, because at least he makes me laugh. I think at the end of the world a sense of humor would be important.
Plus, of course, Michael looks really good without a shirt.
And if it really was the end of the world, Lilly would be dead, so she’d never know her brother and I were procreating!
I’dnever want Lilly to know that I feel that way about her brother. She’d think it was weird.
Weirder even than me turning out to be the princess of Genovia.
Later on Saturday
The whole way home from Lilly’s I worried about what my mom and dad were going to say when I got home. I had never disobeyed them before. I mean, really never.
Well, okay, there was that one time Lilly and Shameeka and Ling Su and I went to see that Christian Slater movie, but we ended up going toThe Rocky Horror Picture Show instead, and I forgot to call until after the movie, which ended at like 2:30 in the morning and we were in Times Square and didn’t have enough money left among us for a cab.
But that was just that one time! And I totally learned a lesson from it, without my mom having to ground me or anything. Not that she would ever do something like that—ground me, I mean. Who would go to the cash machine to get money for take-out if I were grounded?
But my dad’s another story. He is totally rigid in the discipline department. My mom says that’s because Grandmère used to punish him when he was a little boy by locking him into this one really scary room in their house.
Now that I think about it, the house my dad grew up in was probably the castle, and that scary room was probably the dungeon.
Geez, no wonder my dad does every single thing Grandmère says.
Anyway, when my dad gets mad at me hereally gets mad. Like the time I wouldn’t go to church with Grandmère because I refused to pray to a god who would allow rain forests to be destroyed in order to make grazing room for cows who would later become Quarter Pounders for the ignorant masses who worship that symbol of all that is evil, Ronald McDonald. Not only did my dad tell me that if I didn’t go to church he’d wear out my behind, he said he wouldn’t let me read Michael’s webzine,Crackhead, again! He refused to let me go on-line again for the rest of the summer. He crushed my modem with a magnum of Chateauneuf du Pape.
Talk about reactionary!
So I was totally worried about what he was going to do when I got home from Lilly’s.
I tried to hang out at the Moscovitzes’ as long as possible: I loaded the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher for Maya, since she was busy writing a letter to her congressman asking him to please do something about her son, Manuel, who was wrongfully imprisoned ten years ago for supporting a revolution in their country. I walked Pavlov, since Michael had to go to an astrophysics lecture at Columbia. I even unclogged the jets in the Drs. Moscovitzes’ Jacuzzi—boy, does Lilly’s dad shed a lot.
Then Lilly had to go and announce that it was time to shoot the one-hour special episode of her show, the one dedicated to her feet. Only it turned out the Drs. Moscovitz had not left, like we thought they had, for their rolfing sessions. They totally overheard and told me that I had to go home while they analyzed Lilly about her need to taunt her sex-crazed stalker.
Here’s the thing:
I am generally a very good daughter. I mean it. I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs. I haven’t given birth at any proms. I am completely trustworthy, and I do my homework most of the time. Except for one lousy F in a class that will be of no use to me whatsoever in my future life, I’m doing pretty well.
And then they had to spring the princess thing on me.
I decided on my way home that if my dad tried to punish me I was going to call Judge Judy. He’d really be sorry if he landed in front of Judge Judy because of this. She’d let him have it, boy, let me tell you. People trying to make other people be princesses when they don’t want to be? Judge Judy wouldn’t stand for any of it.
Of course, when I got home, it turned out I didn’t have to call Judge Judy at all.
My mom hadn’t gone to her studio, which she does every Saturday without fail. She was sitting there waiting for me to come home, reading old copies of the subscription she got me toSeventeen magazine before she realized I was too flat-chested to ever be asked out on a date, so all the information provided in that particular periodical was worthless to me.
Then there was my dad, who was sitting in the exact same spot as he’d been when I’d left the day before, only this time he was reading theSunday Times, even though it was Saturday, and Mom and I have this rule that you can’t start reading the Sunday sections until Sunday. To my surprise, he wasn’t wearing a suit. Today he had on a sweater—cashmere, no doubt given to him by one of his many girlfriends—and corduroy pants.
When I walked in, he folded the paper all carefully, put it down, and gave me this long, intent look, like Captain Picard right before he starts going on to Ryker about the Prime Directive. Then he goes, "We need to talk."
I immediately started in about how it wasn’t like I hadn’t told them where I was, and how I just needed a little time away to think about things, and how I’d been really careful and hadn’t taken the subway or anything, and my dad just went, "I know."
Just like that. "I know."He completely gave in without a fight.
My dad.
I looked at my mom to see if she’d noticed that he’d lost his mind. And then she did the craziest thing. She put the magazine down and came over and hugged me and said, "We’re so sorry, baby."
Hello?These are myparents? Did the body snatchers come while I was gone and replace my parents with pod people? Because that was the only way I could think of that my parents would be so reasonable.
Then my dad goes, "We understand the stress that this has brought you, Mia, and we want you to know that we’ll do everything in our power to try to make this transition as smooth for you as possible."
Then my dad asked me if I knew what a compromise was, and I said yes, of course, I’m not in like the third grade anymore, so he pulled out this piece of paper, and on it we all drafted what my mom calls the Thermopolis-Renaldo Compromise. It goes like this:
I, the undersigned, Artur Christoff Phillipe Gerard Grimaldi Renaldo, agree that my sole offspring and heir, Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, may finish out her high school tenure at Albert Einstein School for Boys (made coeducational circa 1975) without interruption, save for Christmas and summer breaks, which she will spend without complaint in the country of Genovia.
I asked if that meant no more summers at Miragnac, and he said yes. I couldn’t believe it. Christmas and summer, free of Grandmère? That would be like going to the dentist, only instead of having cavities filled I’d just get to readTeen People and suck up a lot of laughing gas! I was so happy, I hugged him right there. But unfortunately, it turned out there was more to the agreement:
I, the undersigned, Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, agree to fulfill the duties of heir to Artur Christoff Phillipe Gerard Grimaldi Renaldo, prince of Genovia, and all that such a role entails, including but not exclusive to, assuming the throne upon the latter’s demise and attending functions of state at which the presence of said heir is deemed essential.
All of that sounded pretty good to me, except the last part. Functions of state? What were they?
My dad got all vague: "Oh, you know. Attending the funerals of world leaders, opening balls, that sort of thing."
Hello? Funerals? Balls? Whatever happened to smashing bottles of champagne against ocean liners, and going to Hollywood premieres, and that kind of thing?
"Well," my dad said, "Hollywood premieres aren’t really all they’re pegged up to be. Flashbulbs going off in your face, that kind of thing. Terribly unpleasant."
Yeah, butfunerals?Balls? I don’t even know how to put on lip liner, let alone curtsy. . . .
"Oh, that’s all right," my dad said, putting the cap back on his pen. "Grandmère will take care of that."
Yeah, right. What canshe do? She’s in France!
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Saturday Night
I can’t even believe what a loser I am. I mean, Saturday night, alone with my DAD!
He actually tried to talk me into going to seeBeauty and the Beast, like he felt sorry for me because I didn’t have a date!
I finally had to say, "Look, Dad, I am not a child anymore. Even the prince of Genovia can’t get tickets to a Broadway show at a minute’s notice on a Saturday night."
He was just feeling left out because Mom had taken off on another date with Mr. Gianini. She wanted to cancel on him, given all the upheaval that has occurred in my life over the past twenty-four hours, but I totally made her go because I could see her lips getting smaller and smaller the more time she spent with Dad. Mom’s lips only get small when she’s trying to keep herself from saying something, and I think what she wanted to say to my dad was"Get out! Go back to your hotel! You’re paying six hundred dollars a night for that suite! Can’t you go stay in it?"
My dad drives my mom completely insane because he’s always going around, digging her bank statements out from the big salad bowl where she throws all our mail, and trying to tell her how much she would save in interest if she would just transfer funds out of her checking account and into a Roth IRA.
So even though she felt like she should stay home, I knew if she did she’d explode, so I said go, please go, and that Dad and I would discuss what it’s like to govern a small principality in today’s economic market. Only when Mom came out in her datewear, which included this totally hot black minidress from Victoria’s Secret (my mom hates shopping, so she buys all her clothes from catalogs while she’s soaking in the tub after a long day of painting), my dad started to choke on this ice cube. I guess he had never seen my mom in a minidress before—back in college, when they were going out, all she ever wore were overalls, like me—because he drank down his scotch and soda really fast and then said, "That’swhat you’re wearing?" which made my mom go, "What’s wrong with it?" and look at herself all worriedly in the mirror.
She looked totally fine; in fact, she looked much better than she usually did, which I guess was the problem. I mean, it sounds weird to admit, but my mom can be a total Betty when she puts her mind to it. I can onlywish that someday I’ll be as pretty as my mom. I mean,she doesn’t have Yield sign hair or a flat chest or size-ten shoes. She is way hot, as far as moms go.
Then the buzzer rang and Mom ran out because she didn’t want Mr. Gianini to come up and meet her ex, the prince of Genovia. Which was understandable, since he was still choking and looked sort of funny. I mean, he looked like a red-faced bald man in a cashmere sweater coughing up a lung. I mean,I would have been embarrassed to admit I had ever had sex with him, if I were her.
Anyway, it was good for me that she didn’t buzz Mr. Gianini up, because I didn’t want him asking me in front of my parents why I hadn’t gone to his review session on Friday.
So then, after they were gone, I tried to show my dad how much better suited I am for life in Manhattan than in Genovia by ordering some really excellent food. I got us an insalata caprese, ravioli al funghetto, and a pizza margherita, all for under twenty bucks, but I swear, my dad wasn’t a bit impressed! He just poured himself another scotch and soda and turned on the TV. He didn’t even notice when Fat Louie sat down next to him. He started petting him like it was nothing. And my dad claims to beallergic to cats.
And then, to top it all off, he didn’t even want to talk about Genovia. All he wanted to do was watch sports. I’m not kidding. Sports. We have seventy-seven channels, and all he would watch were the ones showing men in uniforms chasing after a little ball. Forget the Dirty Harry movie marathon. Forget Pop-Up Videos. He just turned on the sports channel and stared at it, and when I happened to mention that Mom and I usually watch whatever is on HBO on Saturday nights, he just turned up the volume!!!
What a baby.
And you think that’s bad? You should have seen him when the food got here. He made Lars frisk the deliveryman before he would let me buzz him up! Can you believe it? I had to give Antonio a whole extra dollar to make up for the indignity of it all. And then my dad sat down and ate, without saying a word, until, after another scotch and soda, he fell asleep, right on the futon, with Fat Louie on his lap!
I guess being a prince and having had testicular cancer can really make a person think he’s something special. I mean, God forbid he should share some quality time with his only daughter, the heir to his throne.
So here I am again, home on a Saturday night. Not that I’m ever NOT home on a Saturday night, except when I’m with Lilly. Why am I so unpopular? I mean, I know I look weird and stuff, but I really try to be nice to people, you know? You’d think people would value me as a human being and invite me to their parties just because they like my company. It’s not MY fault my hair sticks out the way it does, any more than it’s Lilly’s fault her face looks sort of squished.
I tried to call Lilly a zillion times, but her phone was busy, which meant Michael was probably home working on his ’zine. The Moscovitzes are trying to have a second line installed so that people who call them can actually get through once in a while, but the phone company says it doesn’t have any more 212 numbers to give out. Lilly’s mom says she refuses to have two separate area codes in the same apartment and that if she can’t have 212 she’ll just buy a beeper. Besides, Michael will be leaving for college next fall, and then their phone problems will be solved.
I really wanted to talk to Lilly. I mean, I haven’t told her anything about the princess thing, and I’m not going to,ever, but sometimes, even without telling her what’s bothering me, talking to Lilly makes me feel better. Maybe it’s just knowing that somebody else my age is also stuck at home on a Saturday night. I mean, most of the other girls in our class date. Even Shameeka has started dating. She’s been quite popular since she developed breasts over the summer. True, her curfew is ten o’clock, even on weekends, and she has to introduce her date to her mom and dad, and her date has to provide a detailed itinerary of exactly where they’re going and what they’ll be doing, besides showing two pieces of photo ID for Mr. Taylor to photocopy before he’ll let Shameeka go out of the house with him.
But still, she’sdating. Somebodyasked her out.
Nobody has ever asked me out.
It was pretty boring, watching my dad snore, even though it was fairly comical the way Fat Louie kept glancing at him, all annoyed, every time he inhaled. I had already seen all the Dirty Harry movies, and there was nothing else on. I decided to try instant messaging Michael, telling him I really needed to talk to Lilly and would he please go off-line so I could call her.
CRACKING:WHAT DO YOU WANT, THERMOPOLIS?
FTLOUIE:I WANT TO TALK TO LILLY. PLEASE GO OFF-LINE SO I CAN CALL HER.
CRACKING:WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK TO HER ABOUT?
FTLOUIE:NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. JUST GO OFF-LINE, PLEASE. YOU CAN’T HOG ALL THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION TO YOURSELF. IT ISN’T FAIR.
CRACKING:NO ONE EVER SAID LIFE WAS FAIR, THERMOPOLIS. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HOME, ANYWAY? WHAT’S THE MATTER? DREAMBOY DIDN’T CALL?
FTLOUIE:WHO’S DREAMBOY?
CRACKING:YOU KNOW, YOUR POSTNUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON LIFE-MATE OF CHOICE, JOSH RICHTER.
Lilly told him! I can’t believe she told him! I’m going to kill her.
FTLOUIE:WOULD YOU PLEASE GO OFF-LINE SO I CAN CALL LILLY????
CRACKING:WHAT’S THE MATTER, THERMOPOLIS? DID I STRIKE A NERVE?
I logged off. He can be such a jerk sometimes.
But then about five minutes later the phone rang, and it was Lilly. So I guess even though Michael’s a jerk, he can be a nice jerk when he wants to be.
Lilly’s very upset about how her parents are violating her First Amendment right to free speech by not letting her make the episode of her show dedicated to her feet. She is going to call the ACLU as soon as it opens on Monday morning. Without her parents’ financial support, which they have currently revoked,Lilly Tells It Like It Is cannot go on. It costs about $200 per episode, if you include the cost of tape and all. Public access is only accessible to people with cash.
Lilly was so upset that I didn’t feel like yelling at her about telling Michael that I chose Josh. Now that I think about it, it’s probably just better that way.
My life is a convoluted web of lies.
Sunday, October 5
I can’t believe Mr. Gianini told her. I can’t believe he told my mother I skipped his stupid review session on Friday!!!!
Hello?Do I have no rights here? Can’t I skip a review session and not get finked on by my mother’s boyfriend?
I mean, it’s not like my life isn’t bad enough: I’m already deformed,and I have to be a princess. Do I have to have my every activity reported upon by my Algebra teacher????
Thanks a lot, Mr. Gianini. Thanks to you, I got to spend my entire Sunday having the quadratic formula drilled into me by my demented father, who kept rubbing his bald head and screaming in frustration when he found out I don’t know how to multiply fractions.
Hello? May I remind everyone that I’m supposed to have Saturday and Sunday OFF from school?
AND Mr. Gianini had to go and tell my mother there’s going to be a pop quiz tomorrow. I mean, I guess that was kind of nice of him and all, to give me a heads-up, but you’re not supposed to study for a pop quiz. The whole point is to test what you’ve retained.
Then again, since I’ve apparently retained nothing mathematical since about the second grade, I guess I can’t really blame my dad for being so mad. He said if I don’t pass Algebra he’s going to make me go to summer school. So then I pointed out that summer school was fine by me, since I’d already agreed to spend summers in Genovia. So then he said I’d have to go to summer school in GENOVIA!
I am so sure. I met some kids who went to school in Genovia and they didn’t even know what a number line was. And they measure everything by kilos and centimeters. As if metric wasn’t so totally over!
But just in case, I’m not taking any chances. I wrote out the quadratic formula on the white rubber sole of my Converse high-top, right where it curves in between my heel and my toes. I’ll wear them tomorrow and cross my legs and take a peek if I get stuck.
Monday, October 6, 3 a.m.
I’ve been up all night, worrying about getting caught cheating. What will happen if someone sees I have the quadratic formula written on my shoe? Will I be expelled? I don’t want to be expelled! I mean, even though everybody at Albert Einstein High School thinks I’m a freak, I’m sort of getting used to it. I don’t want to have to start over at a whole new school. I’ll have to wear the scarlet mark of being a cheater for the rest of my high school career!
And what about college? I might not get into college if it goes down on my permanent record that I’m a cheater.
Not that I want to go to college. But what about Greenpeace? I’m sure Greenpeace doesn’t want cheaters. Oh my God, what am I going to do???
Monday, October 6, 4 a.m.
I tried washing the quadratic formula off my shoe, but it won’t come off! I must have used indelible ink or something! What if my dad finds out? Do they still behead people in Genovia?
Monday, October 6, 7 a.m.
Decided to wear my Docs and throw my high-tops away on the way to school—but then I broke one of the bootlaces! I can’t wear any of my other shoes because they’re all size nine and a half, and my foot grew a whole half inch last month! I can barely walk in my loafers, and my heels hang out over the backs of my clogs. I have no choice but to wear my high-tops!
I’m going to get caught for sure, I just know it.
Monday, October 6, 9 a.m.
Realized in the car on the way to school that I could have taken the laces out of my high-tops and strung them through my Doc Martens. I am so stupid.
Lilly wants to know how much longer my dad is going to be in town. She doesn’t like being driven to school. She likes to ride the subway, because then she can brush up on her Spanish, by reading all the health awareness posters. I told her I didn’t know how long my dad was going to be in town, but that I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be allowed to ride the subway anymore, anywhere.
Lilly observed that my father was taking this infertility thing too far, that just because he can no longer render anyoneembarrazada is no reason to get all overprotective of me. I noticed that, in the driver’s seat, Lars was sort of laughing to himself. I hope he doesn’t speak Spanish. How embarrassing.
Anyway, Lilly went on to say I should take a stand right away, now, before things get worse, and that she could tell it was already starting to take a toll on me, since I seemed listless and there were circles under my eyes.
Of course I’m listless! I’ve been up since 3 a.m., trying to wash my shoes!
Went into the girls’ room to try to wash them again. Lana Weinberger came in while I was there. She saw me washing my shoes, and she just rolled her eyes and started brushing her long, Marcia Brady hair and staring at herself in the mirror. I half expected her to walk right up to her reflection and kiss it, she is so obviously in love with herself.
The quadratic formula is smeared, but still legible, on my sneaker. But I won’t look at it during the test, I swear.
Monday, October 6, G & T
Okay. I admit it. I looked.
Fat lot of good it did me, too. After he’d collected the test, Mr. Gianini went over the problems on the board, and I got every single one of them wrong anyway.
I CAN’T EVEN CHEAT RIGHT!!!
I have got to be the most pathetic human being on the planet.
polynomials term: variables multiplied by a coefficient degree of polynomial = the degree of the term with the highest degree
Hello? Does ANYONE care??? I mean, really, truly care about polynomials? I mean, besides people like Michael Moscovitz and Mr. Gianini. Anyone? Anyone at all?
When the bell finally rang, Mr. Gianini goes, "Mia, will I have the pleasure of your company this afternoon at the review session?"
I said yes, but I didn’t say it loud enough for anyone to hear but him.
Why me?Why, why, why? Like I don’t have enough to worry about. I’m flunking Algebra, my mom’s dating my teacher, and I’m the princess of Genovia.
Something has justgot to give.
Tuesday, October 7
Ode to Algebra
Thrust into this dingy classroom we die like lampless moths locked into the desolation of fluorescent lights and metal desks. Ten minutes until the bell rings. What use is the quadratic formula in our daily lives? Can we use it to unlock the secrets in the hearts of those we love? Five minutes until the bell rings. Cruel Algebra teacher, won’t you let us go?
HOMEWORK
Algebra: problems 17–30 on handout English: proposal World Civ: questions at end of Chapter 7 G & T: none French:huit phrase, ex. A, pg. 31 Biology: worksheet
Wednesday, October 8
Oh no.
She’shere.
Well, nothere, exactly. But she’s in this country. She’s in the city. She’s only like fifty-seven blocks away, as a matter of fact. She’s staying at the Plaza, with Dad. Thank God. Now I’ll only have to see her after school and on the weekends. It would suck so bad if she were staying here.
It’s pretty awful, seeing her first thing in the morning. She wears these really fancy negligees to bed, with big lace sections that everything shows through. You know. Stuff you wouldn’t want to see. Plus, even though she takes her makeup off to sleep, she still has on eyeliner, because she had it tattooed onto her eyelids back in the eighties when she went through a brief manic phase shortly after Princess Grace died (according to my mom). It looks pretty weird, seeing this little old lady in a lace nightie with big black lines around her eyes first thing in the morning.
Actually, it’s scary. Scarier than Freddy Kruger and Jason put together.
No wonder Grandpère died of a heart attack in bed. He probably rolled over one morning and got a real good look at his wife.
Somebody ought to warn the president she’s here. I mean it; he really ought to know. Because if anybody could start World War III, it’s my grandmother.
Last time I saw Grandmère, she was having this dinner party, and she served everybody foie gras except this one woman. She just had Marie, her cook, leave that lady’s plate bare for the foie gras course. And when I tried to give the lady my foie gras, because I thought maybe they had run out—and anyway, I don’t eat anything that once was alive—my grandmother was all, "Amelia!" She said it so loud, she scared me. She made me drop my slice of foie gras on the floor. Her horrible miniature poodle pried it up off the parquet before I could even move.
And then later, after everybody left, when I asked her why she wouldn’t give that lady any foie gras, Grandmère said it was because the lady had had a child out of wedlock.
Hello?Grandmère, may I point out that your own son had a child out of wedlock, namely me, Mia,your granddaughter?
But when I said that, Grandmère just yelled for her maid to bring her another drink. Oh, so I guess it’s okay to have a child out of wedlock if you’re a PRINCE. But if you’re just a regular person, no foie gras for you.
Oh, no! What if Grandmère comes to the loft? She’s never seen the loft before. I don’t think she’s ever been below Fifty-seventh Street. She’s going to hate it here in the Village, I’m telling you right now. People of the same sex kiss and hold hands in our neighborhood all the time. Grandmère has a fit when she sees people of theopposite sex holding hands. What’s she going to do during the Gay Pride Parade, when everybody is kissing and holding hands and shouting "We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Over It?" Grandmère won’t get over it. She might have a heart attack. She doesn’t even like pierced ears, let alone pierced anything else.
Plus it’s against the law to smoke in restaurants here, and Grandmère smokes all the time, even in bed, which is why Grandpère had these weird disposable oxygen masks installed in every single room at Miragnac and had an underground tunnel dug that we could run through in case Grandmère fell asleep with a cigarette in her mouth and the chateau burst into flames.
Also, Grandmère hates cats. She thinks they jump on children while they’re sleeping on purpose to suck out their breath. What’s she going to say when she sees Fat Louie? He sleeps in bed with me every night. If he ever jumped on my face, he’d kill me instantly. He weighs twenty-five pounds and seven ounces, and that’s before he’s had his can of Fancy Feast in the morning.
And can you imagine what she’ll do when she sees my mom’s collection of wooden fertility goddesses?
Why did she have to come NOW? She’s going to ruin EVERYTHING. There’s no way I’m going to be able to keep this a secret from everyone with HER around.
Why? Why?? WHY???
Thursday, October 9
I found out why.
She’s giving me princess lessons.
In too much shock to write. More later.
Friday, October 10
Princess lessons.
I am not kidding. I have to go straight from my Algebra review session every day to princess lessons at the Plaza with my grandmother.
Okay, so if there’s a God, how could this have happened?
I mean it. Like, people always talk about how God doesn’t ever give you more than you can handle, but I’m telling you right now, I cannot handle this. This is justtoo much! Ican-not go to princess lessons every day after school. Not with Grandmère. I am seriously considering running away from home.
My dad says I have no choice. Last night, after I left Grandmère’s room at the Plaza, I went straight down to his. I banged on the door, and when he answered it I stalked straight in and told him I wasn’t doing it. No way. Nobody had told me anything about princess lessons.
And do you know what he said? He says I signed the compromise, so I am obligated to attend princess lessons as part of my duties as his heir.
I said then we are just going to have to revise the compromise, because there was nothing in there about me having to meet with Grandmère every day after school for any princess lessons.
But my dad wouldn’t even talk to me about it. He said he was late and could we please talk about it later. And then while I was standing there, going on about how unfair this all was, in walks this reporter from ABC. I guess she was there to interview him, but it was kind of funny, because I’ve seen her interview people before, and normally she doesn’t wear black sleeveless cocktail dresses when she’s interviewing the president or somebody like that.
I’m going to have to take a good look at that compromise tonight, because I don’t recall it saying anything about princess lessons.
Here is how my first "lesson" went, yesterday after school:
First the doorman won’t even let me in (big surprise). Then he sees Lars, who is like six foot seven and must weigh three hundred pounds. Plus, Lars has this bulge sticking out of his jacket, and I only just now figured out that it’s a gun and not the stump of an extraneous third arm, which is what originally I thought. I was too embarrassed to ask him about it, in case it dredged up painful memories for him of being teased as a child in Amsterdam, or wherever he is from. I mean, I know what it’s like to be a freak: It’s just better not to bring that kind of thing up.
But no, it’s a gun, and the doorman got all upset about it and called the concierge over. Thank God the concierge recognized Lars, who’s staying there, after all, in a room in Dad’s suite.
So then the concierge himself escorted me upstairs to the penthouse, which is where Grandmère is staying. Let me tell you about this penthouse: It is very fancy. I thought the ladies’ room at the Plaza was fancy? The ladies’ room is nothing compared to this penthouse.
First of all, everything is pink. Pink walls, pink carpet, pink curtains, pink furniture. There are pink roses everywhere, and these portraits hanging on the walls that all feature pink-cheeked shepherdesses and stuff.
And just when I thought I was going to drown in pinkness, out came Grandmère, dressed completely in purple, from her silk turban all the way down to her mules with the rhinestone clips on the toes.
At least, I think they’re rhinestones.
Grandmère always wears purple. Lilly says people who wear purple a lot usually have borderline personality disorders, because they have delusions of grandeur. Traditionally, purple has always stood for the aristocracy, since for hundreds of years peasants weren’t allowed to dye their clothes with indigo, and therefore couldn’t make violet.
Of course, Lilly doesn’t know my grandmother IS a member of the aristocracy. So while Grandmère is definitely delusional, it’s not because she THINKS she’s an aristocrat; she really IS one.
So Grandmère comes in off the terrace, where she was standing, and the first thing she says to me is, "What’s that writing on your shoe?"
But I didn’t need to worry about getting caught cheating, because Grandmère started in right away about everything else that was wrong with me.
"Why are you wearing tennis shoes with a skirt? Are those tights supposed to be clean? Why can’t you stand up straight? What’s wrong with your hair? Have you been biting your nails again, Amelia? I thought we agreed you were going to give up that nasty habit. My God, can’t you stop growing? Is it your goal to be as tall as your father?"
Only it sounded even worse, because it was all in French.
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she goes, in her creaky old cigaretty voice, "Haven’t you a kiss for yourgrandmère, then?"
So I go up to her and bend down (my grandmother is like a foot shorter than me) and kiss her on the cheek (which is very soft because she rubs Vaseline on her face every night before she goes to bed), and then when I start to pull away she grabs me and goes, "Pfui!Have you forgotteneverything I taught you?" and makes me kiss her on the other cheek, too, because in Europe (and SoHo), that’s how you say hello to people.
Anyway, I bent down and kissed Grandmère on the other cheek, and as I did so I noticed Rommel peeking out from behind her. Rommel is Grandmère’s fifteen-year-old miniature poodle. He is the same shape and size as an iguana, only not as smart. He shakes all the time and has to wear a fleece jacket. Today his jacket was the same purple as Grandmère’s dress. Rommel won’t let anyone touch him except for Grandmère, and even then he rolls his eyes around as if he were being tortured while she’s petting him.
If Noah had ever met Rommel, he might have changed his mind about letting two ofall of God’s creatures on the ark.
"Now," Grandmère said when she felt we’d been affectionate enough, "let’s see if I have this right: Your father tells you that you are the princess of Genovia and you burst into tears. Why is this?"
All of a sudden, I got very tired. I had to sit down on one of the pink foofy chairs before I fell down.
"Oh, Grandmère," I said in English. "I don’t want to be a princess. I just want to be me, Mia."
Grandmère said, "Don’t converse in English with me. It’s vulgar. Speak French when you speak to me. Sit up straight in that chair. Do not drape your legs over the arm. And you are not Mia. You are Amelia. In fact, you are Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Renaldo."
I said, "You forgot Thermopolis," and Grandmère gave me the evil eye. She is very good at this.
"No," she said. "I did not forget Thermopolis."
Then Grandmère sat down in the foofy chair next to mine and said, "Are you telling me you have no wish to assume your rightful place upon the throne?"
Boy, was I tired. "Grandmère, you know as well as I do that I’m not princess material, okay? So why are we even wasting our time?"
Grandmère looked at me out of her twin tattoos of eyeliner. I could tell she wanted to kill me but probably couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting blood on the pink carpet.
"You are the heir to the crown of Genovia," she said in this totally serious voice. "And you will take my son’s place on the throne when he dies. This is how it is. There is no other way."
Oh, boy.
So I kind of went, "Yeah, whatever, Grandmère. Look, I got a lot of homework. Is this princess thing going to take long?"
Grandmère just looked at me. "It will take," she said, "as long as it takes. I am not afraid to sacrifice my time—or even myself—for the good of my country."
Whoa. This was getting way patriotic. "Um," I said. "Okay."
So then I stared at Grandmère for a while, and she stared back at me, and Rommel laid down on the carpet between our chairs, only he did it really slow, like his legs were too delicate to support all two pounds of him, and then Grandmère broke the silence by saying, "We will begin tomorrow. You will come here directly after school."
"Um, Grandmère. I can’t come here directly after school. I’m flunking Algebra. I have to go to a review session every day after school."
"Then after that. No dawdling. You will bring with you a list of the ten women you admire most in the world, and why. That is all."
My mouth fell open.Homework? There’s going to behomework? Nobody said anything about homework!
"And close your mouth," she barked. "It is uncouth to let it hang open like that."
I closed my mouth. Homework???
"Tomorrow you will wear nylons. Not tights. Not kneesocks. You are too old for tights and kneesocks. And you will wear your school shoes, not tennis sneakers. You will style your hair, apply lipstick, and paint your fingernails—what’s left of them, anyway." Grandmère stood up. She didn’t even have to push up with her hands on the arms of her chair, either. Grandmère’s pretty spry for her age. "Now I must dress for dinner with the shah. Good-bye."
I just sat there. Was she insane? Was she completely nuts? Did she have the slightest idea what she was asking me to do?
Evidently she did, since the next thing I knew Lars was standing there, and Grandmère and Rommel were gone.
Geez! Homework!!! Nobody said there was going to be homework.
And that’s not the worst of it. Panty hose? To school? I mean, the only girls who wear panty hose to school are girls like Lana Weinberger, and seniors, and people like that. You know. Show-offs. None ofmy friends wear panty hose.
And, I might add, none of my friends wear lipstick or nail polish or do their hair. Not forschool, anyway.
But what choice did I have? Grandmère totally scared me, with her tattooed eyelids and all. I couldn’t NOT do what she said.
So what I did was, I borrowed a pair of my mom’s panty hose. She wears them whenever she has an opening—and on dates with Mr. Gianini, I’ve noticed. I took a pair of her panty hose to school with me in my backpack. I didn’t have any fingernails to paint—according to Lilly, I am orally fixated; if it fits in my mouth, I’ll put it there—but I did borrow one of my mom’s lipsticks, too. And I tried some mousse I found in the medicine cabinet. It must have worked, since when Lilly got into the car this morning, she said, "Wow. Where’d you pick up the Jersey girl, Lars?"
Which I guess meant that my hair looked really big, like girls from New Jersey wear it when they come into Manhattan for a romantic dinner in Little Italy with their boyfriends.
So then, after my review session with Mr. G at the end of the day, I went into the girls’ room and put on the panty hose, the lipstick, and my loafers, which are too small and pinch my toes really bad. When I checked myself out in the mirror, I thought I didn’t look so bad. I didn’t think Grandmère would have any complaints.
I thought I was pretty slick, waiting to change until after school. I figured on a Friday afternoon there wouldn’t be anyone hanging around. Who wants to hang around school on a Friday?
I had forgotten, of course, about the Computer Club.
Everybodyforgets about the Computer Club, even the people who belong to it. They don’t have any friends, except each other, and they never go on dates—only unlike me, I think this is by choice: No one at Albert Einstein is smart enough for them—except, again, for each other.
Anyway, I walked out of the girls’ room and ran smack into Lilly’s brother, Michael. He’s the Computer Club treasurer. He’s smart enough to be president, but he says he has no interest in being a figurehead.
"Christ, Thermopolis," he said, as I scrambled around, trying to pick up all the stuff I’d dropped—like my high-tops and socks and stuff—when I bumped into him. "What happened toyou?"
I thought he meant why was I there so late. "You know I have to meet with Mr. Gianini every day after school because I’m flunking Alge—"
"I knowthat." Michael held up the lipstick that had exploded out of my backpack. "I mean what’s with the war paint?"
I took it away from him. "Nothing. Don’t tell Lilly."
"Don’t tell Lilly what?" I stood up, and he noticed the panty hose. "Jesus, Thermopolis. Where areyou going?"
"Nowhere." Must I continuously be forced to lie all the time? I really wished he would go away. Plus a bunch of his computer nerd friends were standing there, staring at me like I was some new kind of pixel or something. It was making me pretty uncomfortable.
"Nobody goesnowhere looking like that." Michael shifted his laptop from one arm to the other, then got this funny look on his face. "Thermopolis, are you going out on adate?"
"What?No, I’m not going on a date!" I was completely shocked at the idea. Adate?Me? I’m so sure! "I have to meet my grandmother!"
Michael didn’t look as if he believed me. "And do you usually wear lipstick and panty hose to meet your grandmother?"
I heard some discreet coughing, and looked down the hall. Lars was there by the doors, waiting for me.
I guess I could have stood there and explained that my grandmother had threatened me with bodily harm (well, practically) if I didn’t wear make up and nylons to meet her. But I sort of didn’t think he’d believe me. So I said, "Look, don’t tell Lilly, okay?"
Then I ran away.
I knew I was dead meat. There was no way Michael wasn’t going to tell his sister about seeing me coming out of the girls’ room after school in lipstick and panty hose. No way.
And Grandmère’s was HORRIBLE. She said the lipstick I had on made me look like apoulet. At least that’s what I thought she said, and I couldn’t figure out why she thought I looked like a chicken. But just now I looked uppoulet in my English-French dictionary, and it turns outpoulet can also mean "prostitute"! My grandmother called me a hooker!
Geez! Whatever happened to nice grandmothers, who bake brownies for you and tell you how precious you are? It’s just my luck I get one who has tattooed eyeliner and tells meI look like a hooker.
Andshe said that the panty hose I had on were the wrong color. How could they be the wrong color? They’re panty hose color! Then she made me practice sitting down so my underwear didn’t show between my legs for like two hours!
I’m thinking about calling Amnesty International. This has to constitute torture.
And when I gave her my essay on the ten women I admire most, she read it and then ripped it up into little pieces! I am not even kidding!
I couldn’t help screaming, "Grandmère, why’d you do that?" and she went, all calmly, "These are not the sort of women you should be admiring. You should be admiringreal women."
I asked Grandmère what she meant by "real women,"because all of the women on my list are real. I mean, Madonna might have had a little plastic surgery, but she’s stillreal.
But Grandmère says real women are Princess Grace and Coco Chanel. I pointed out to her that Princess Diana is on my list, and you know what she said? She says she thinks Princess Diana was a "twink"! That’s what she called her. A "twink."
Only she pronounced it "tweenk."
Geez!
After we’d rehearsed sitting for an hour, Grandmère said she had to go and take a bath, since she’s having dinner tonight with some prime minister. She told me to be at the Plaza tomorrow no later than ten o’clock—A.M.10A.M.!
"Grandmère," I said. "Tomorrow is Saturday."
"I know it."
"But Grandmère," I said. "Saturdays are when I help my friend Lilly film her TV show—"
But Grandmère asked me which was more important, Lilly’s TV show or the well-being of the people of Genovia, who, in case you didn’t know, number in the 50,000 range.
I guess 50,000 people are more important than one episode ofLilly Tells It Like It Is. Still, it’s going to be tough explaining to Lilly why I won’t be there to hold the camera when she confronts Mr. and Mrs. Ho, owners of Ho’s Deli, across the street from Albert Einstein, about their unfair pricing policies. Lilly has discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Ho give significant discounts to the Asian students who go to Albert Einstein, but no discounts at all to the Caucasian, African American, Latino, or Arab students. Lilly discovered this yesterday after play rehearsal when she went to buy ginkgo biloba puffs and Ling Su, in front of her in line, bought the same thing. But Mrs. Ho charged her (Lilly)five whole cents more than Ling Su for the same product.
And then when Lilly complained, Mrs. Ho pretended like she couldn’t speak English, even though she must speak some English, or why else would her mini-TV behind the counter always be tuned to Judge Judy?
Lilly has decided to secretly videotape the Hos to gather evidence of their blatantly preferential treatment of Asian Americans. She’s calling for a school-wide boycott of Ho’s Deli.
The thing is, I think Lilly’s making a really big deal about five cents. But Lilly says it’s the principle of the thing, and that maybe if people had made a big deal about how the Nazis smashed up Jewish people’s store windows on Kristalnacht they wouldn’t have ended up putting so many people in ovens.
I don’t know. The Hos aren’t exactly Nazis. They’re very nice to the little cat they’ve raised from a kitten to chase rats away from the chicken wings in the salad bar.
Maybe I’m not too sorry about missing the taping tomorrow.
But Iam sorry Grandmère tore up my list of the ten women I admire most. I thought it wasnice. When I got home, I printed it out again, just because it made me so mad, her tearing it up like that. I put a copy in this book.
And after carefully reviewing my copy of the Renaldo-Thermopolis Compromise, I seenothing about princess lessons. Something is going to have to be done about this. I have been leaving messages for Dad all night, but he doesn’t answer. Whereis he?
Lilly isn’t home, either. Maya says the Moscovitzes went to Great Shanghai for dinner as a family, in order to grow to understand one another better as human beings.
I wish Lilly would hurry up and get home and call me back. I don’t want her to think I’m in any way against her groundbreaking investigation into Ho’s Deli. I just want to tell her the reason I won’t be able to be there is because I have to spend the day with my grandmother.
I hate my life.
The Ten Women I Admire Most in the Whole World
by Mia Thermopolis
Madonna.Madonna Ciccone revolutionized the fashion world with her iconoclastic sense of style, sometimes offending people who are not very open-minded—for instance, her rhinestone cross earrings, which made many Christian groups ban her CDs—or who have no sense of humor—like Pepsi, which didn’t like it when she danced in front of some burning crosses. It was because she wasn’t afraid to make people like the Pope mad that Madonna became one of the richest female entertainers in the world, paving the way for women performers everywhere by showing them that it is possible to be sexy onstage and smart off it. Princess Diana.Even though she is dead, Princess Diana is one of my favorite women of all time. She, too, revolutionized the fashion world by refusing to wear the ugly old hats that her mother-in-law told her to wear, and instead wore Halston and Bill Blass. Also she visited a lot of really sick people, even though nobody made her do it, and some people, like her husband, even made fun of her for doing it. The night Princess Diana died I unplugged the TV and said I would never watch it again, since media was what killed her. But then I regretted it the next morning when I couldn’t watch Japanese Anime on the Sci-Fi channel, because unplugging the TV scrambled our cable box. Hillary Rodham Clinton.Hillary Rodham Clinton totally recognized that her thick ankles were detracting from her image as a serious politician, and so she started wearing pants. Also, even though everybody was talking bad about her all the time for not leaving her husband, who was going around having sex with people behind her back, she pretended like nothing was going on and went on running the country, just like she’d always done, which is how a president should behave. Picabo Street.She won all those gold medals in skiing, all because she just practiced like crazy and never gave up, even when she was crashing into fences and things. Plus she picked her own name, which is cool. Leola Mae Harmon.I saw a movie about her on the Lifetime channel. Leola was an air force nurse who was in a car accident and the lower part of her face got all mangled, but then Armand Assante, who plays a plastic surgeon, said he could fix her. Leola had to endure hours of painful reconstructive surgery, during which her husband left her because she didn’t have any lips (which I guess is why the movie is calledWhy Me?). Armand Assante said he would make her a new pair of lips, only the other air force doctors didn’t like the fact that he wanted to make them out of skin from Leola’s vagina. But he did it anyway, and then he and Leola got married and worked together to help give other accident victims vagina lips. And the whole thing turned out to have beenbased on a true story. Joan of Arc.Joan of Arc—or Jeanne d’Arc as they say in France—lived in like the twelfth century and one day when she was my age she heard this angel’s voice tell her to take up arms and go help the French army fight against the British (the French were always fighting the British, all the way up until the Nazis attacked, and then they were like, "Zut alors!Can you help us?" and the British had to go in and try to save their lazy butts, for which nobody French has ever been properly grateful, as exemplified by their sloppy highway maintenance; see death of Princess Diana, above). Anyway, Joan cut off her hair and got herself a suit of armor, just like Mulan in the Disney movie, and went and led the French forces to victory in a number of battles. But then, like typical politicians, the French government decided Joan was too powerful, so they accused her of being a witch and burned her to death at the stake. And unlike Lilly, I do NOT believe that Joan was suffering from adolescent onset schizophrenia. I think angels really DID talk to her. None of the schizophrenics in our school have ever had their voices tell them to do something cool like lead their country into battle. All Brandon Hertzenbaum’s voices told him to do was go into the boys’ room and carve "Satan" in the door to the bathroom stall with a protractor. So there you go. Christy.Christy is not really a person. She is the fictional heroine of my favorite book of all time, which is calledChristy,by Catherine Marshall. Christy is a young girl who goes to teach school in the Smokey Mountains at the turn of the century because she believes she can make a difference, and all these really hot guys fall in love with her and she learns about God and typhoid and stuff. Only I can’t tell anyone, especially Lilly, that this is my favorite book, because it’s kind of sappy and religious, and plus it doesn’t have any spaceships or serial killers in it. The Lady Cop I Once Sawgive a truck driver a ticket for honking at a woman who was crossing the street (her skirt was kind of short). The lady cop told the truck driver it was a no-honking zone, and then when he argued about it, she wrote him another ticket for arguing with an officer of the law. Lilly Moscovitz. Lilly Moscovitz isn’t really a woman, yet, but she’s someone I admire very much. She is very, very smart, but unlike many very smart people, she doesn’t rub it in all the time, the fact that she’s so much smarter than me. Well, at least, not much. Lilly is always thinking up fun things for us to do, like go to Barnes & Noble and secretly film me asking Dr. Laura, who was signing books there, if she knows so much how come she’s divorced, then showing it on her (Lilly’s) TV show, including the part where we got thrown out and banned from the Union Square Barnes & Noble forever after. Lilly is my best friend and I tell her everything, except the part about me being a princess, which I don’t think she’d understand. Helen Thermopolis.Helen Thermopolis, besides being my mother, is a very talented artist who was recently featured inArt in Americamagazine as one of the most important painters of the new millennium. Her paintingWoman Waiting for Price Check at the Grand Unionwon this big national award and sold for $140,000, only part of which my mom got to keep, since 15 percent of it went to her gallery and half of what was left went to taxes, which sucks, if you ask me. But even though she’s such an important artist, my mom always has time for me. I also respect her because she is deeply principled: She says she would never think of inflicting her beliefs on others and would thank others to pay her the same courtesy.
Can you believe Grandmère tore this up? I’m telling you, this is the sort of essay that could bring a country to its knees.
Saturday, October 11, 9:30 a.m.
So I was right: Lillydoes think the reason I’m not participating in the taping today is because I’m against her boycott of the Hos.
I told her that wasn’t true, that I had to spent the day with my grandmother. But guess what? She doesn’t believe me. The one time I tell the truth, and she doesn’t believe me!
Lilly says that if I really wanted to get out of spending the day with Grandmère I could, but because I’m so codependent, I can’t say no to anyone. Which doesn’t even make sense, since obviously I am saying no toher. When I pointed that out to Lilly, though, she just got madder. I can’t say no to my grandmother, since she’s like sixty-five years old, and she’s going to die soon, if there’s any justice at all in the world.
Besides, you don’t know my grandmother, I said. You don’t say no to my grandmother.
Then Lilly went, "No, I don’t know your grandmother, do I, Mia? Isn’t that curious, considering the fact that you know allmy grandparents"—the Moscovitzes have me over every year for Passover dinner—"and yet I haven’t met any ofyours?"
Well, of course the reason forthat is that my mom’s parents are like total farmers who live in a place called Versailles, Indiana, only they pronounce it "Ver-sales." My mom’s parents areafraid to come to New York City because they say there are too many "furinners"—by which they mean foreigners—here, and anything that isn’t 100 percent American scares them, which is one of the reasons my mom left home when she was eighteen and has only been back twice, and that was with me. Let me tell you, Versailles is a small, small town. It’s so small that there’s a sign on the door at the bank that says if bank is closed, please slide money under door. I am not lying, either. I took a photo of it and brought it back to show everyone because I knew they wouldn’t believe me. It’s hanging on our refrigerator.
Anyway, Grandpa and Grandma Thermopolis don’t make it out of Indiana much.
And the reason I’d never introduced Lilly to Grandmère Renaldo is because Grandmère Renaldo hates children. And I can’t introduce her now because then Lilly will find out I’m the princess of Genovia, and you can bet I’ll never hear the end ofthat. She’d probably want to interview me, or something, for her TV show. That’s all I need: My name and image plastered all over Manhattan Public Access.
So I was telling Lilly all of this—about how I had to go out with my grandmother, not about my being a princess, of course—and as I was talking I could hear her breathing over the phone in that way she does when she’s mad, and finally she just goes, "Oh, come over tonight then, and help me edit," and slammed the phone down.
Geez.
Well, at least Michael didn’t tell her about the lipstick and panty hose.That would have really made her mad. She never would have believed I was only going to my grandmother’s. No way.
This was all at like nine-thirty, while I was getting ready to go to Grandmère’s. Grandmère told me that for today I don’t have to wear lipstick or panty hose. She said I could wear anything I wanted. So I wore my overalls. I know she hates them, but hey, she said anything I wanted. Hee hee hee.
Oops, gotta go. Lars just pulled up in front of the Plaza. We’re here.
Saturday, October 11
I can never go to school again. I can never goanywhere again. I will never leave this loft, ever, ever again.
You won’t believe what she did to me.I can’t believe what she did to me. I can’t believe my dadlet her do this to me.
Well, he’s going to pay. He’s totally paying for this, and I mean BIG. As soon as I got home (right after my mom went, "Well, hey, Rosemary. Where’s your baby?" which I suppose was some kind of joke about my new haircut, but it was NOT funny), I marched right up to him and said, "You are paying for this. Big time."
Who says I have a fear of confrontation?
He totally tried to get out of it, going, "What do you mean? Mia, I think you look beautiful. Don’t listen to your mother, what does she know? I like your hair. It’s so . . . short."
Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because his mother met Lars and me in the lobby as soon as we’d turned the car over to the valet, and just pointed at the door. Just pointed at the door again, and said, "On y va,"which in English means "Let’s go."
"Let’s go where?" I asked, all innocently (this was this morning, remember, back when I was still innocent).
"Chez Paolo," Grandmère said.Chez Paolo means "Paul’s house." So I thought we were going to meet one of her friends, maybe for brunch or something, and I thought, huh, cool, field trip. Maybe these princess lessons won’t be so bad.
But then we got there, and I saw Chez Paolo wasn’t a house at all. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked a little like a really fancy hospital—it was all frosted glass and these Japanese-looking trees. And then we got inside; all of these skinny young people were floating around, dressed all in black. They were all excited to see my grandmother, and took us to this little room where there were these couches and all these magazines. So then I figured Grandmère maybe had some plastic surgery scheduled, and while I am sort of against plastic surgery—unless you’re like Leola Mae and you need lips—I was like, Well, at least she’ll be off my back for a while.
Boy, was I ever wrong! Paolo isn’t a doctor. I doubt he’s ever even been to college! Paolo is astylist! Worse, he stylespeople! I’m serious. He takes unfashionable, frumpy people like me, and he makes them stylish—for aliving. And Grandmère sicced him onme!Me!! Like it’s bad enough I don’t have breasts. She has to tell some guy namedPaolo that?
What kind of name is Paolo, anyway? I mean, this is America, for Pete’s sake! YOUR NAME IS PAUL!!!
That’s what I wanted to scream at him. But, of course, I couldn’t. I mean, it wasn’t Paolo’s fault my grandmother dragged me there. And as he pointed out to me, he only made time for me in his incredibly busy schedule because Grandmère told him it was this big emergency.
God, how embarrassing.I’m a fashion emergency.
Anyway, I was plenty peeved at Grandmère, but I couldn’t start yelling at her right there in front of Paolo. She totally knew it, too. She just sat there on this velvet couch, petting Rommel, who was sitting on her lap with his legs crossed—she’s even taught herdog to sit ladylike, andhe’s a boy—sipping a Sidecar she got somebody to make for her and readingW.
Meanwhile, Paolo was picking up chunks of my hair and making this face and going, all sadly, "It must go. It mustall go."
And it went. All of it. Well, almost all of it. I still have some like bangs and a little fringe in back.
Did I mention that I’m no longer a dishwater blond? No. I’m just a plain old blond now.
And Paolo didn’t stop there. Oh, no. I now have fingernails. I am not kidding. For the first time in my life, I have fingernails. They’re completely fake, but I have them. And it looks like I’ll have them for a while: I already tried to pull one off, and it HURT. What kind of secret astronaut glue did that manicurist use, anyway?
You might be wondering why, if I didn’t want to have all my hair cut off and fake fingernails glued over my real, stumpy fingernails, I let them do all that.
I’m sort of wondering that myself. I mean, I know I have a fear of confrontation. So it wasn’t like I was going to throw down my glass of lemonade and say, "Okay, stop making a fuss over me, right now!" I mean, they gave me lemonade! Can you imagine that? At the International House of Hair, which is where my mom and I usually go, over on Sixth Avenue, they sure don’t give you lemonade, but itdoes only cost $9.99 for a cut and blow dry.
And it is sort of hard when all these beautiful, fashionable people are telling you how good you’d look inthis and how muchthat would bring out your cheekbones, to remember you’re a feminist and an environmentalist, and don’t believe in using makeup or chemicals that might be harmful to the earth. I mean, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, or cause a scene, or anything like that.
And I kept telling myself, She’s only doing this because she loves you. My grandmother, I mean. I know she probably wasn’t doing it for that reason—I don’t think Grandmère loves me any more than I love her—but Itold myself that, anyway.
I told myself that after we left Paolo’s and went to Bergdorf Goodman, where Grandmère bought me four pairs of shoes that cost almost as much as the removal of that sock from Fat Louie’s small intestines. I told myself that after she bought me a bunch of clothes I will never wear. I did tell her I would never wear these clothes, but she just waved at me. Like, Go on, go on. You tell such amusing stories.
Well, I for one will not stand for it. There isn’t a single inch of me that hasn’t been pinched, cut, filed, painted, sloughed, blown dry, or moisturized. I even have fingernails.
But I am not happy. I am not a bit happy.Grandmère’s happy.Grandmère’s head over heels happy about how I look. Because I don’t look a thing like Mia Thermopolis. Mia Thermopolis never had fingernails. Mia Thermopolis never had blond highlights. Mia Thermopolis never wore makeup or Gucci shoes or Chanel skirts or Christian Dior bras, which, by the way, don’t even come in 32A, which is my size. I don’t even know who I am anymore. It certainly isn’t Mia Thermopolis.
She’s turning me into someone else.
So I stood in front of my father, looking like a human Q-tip in my new hair, and I let him have it.
"First she makes me do homework. Then she rips the homework up. Then she gives me sitting lessons. Then she has all my hair dyed a different color and most of it hacked off, makes someone glue tiny surfboards to my fingernails, buys me shoes that cost as much as small animal surgery, and clothes that make me look like Vicky, the captain’s daughter in that old seventies seriesThe Love Boat.
"Well, Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m not Vicky, and I never will be, no matter how much Grandmère dresses me up like her. I’m not going to do great in school, be supercheerful all the time, or have any shipboard romances. That’s Vicky. That’s not me!"
My mom was coming out of her bedroom, putting the last touches on her date wear, when I screamed this. She was wearing a new outfit. It was this sort of Spanish skirt in all these different colors, and a sort of off-the-shoulder top. Her long hair was all over the place, and she looked really great. In fact, my dad headed for the liquor cabinet again when he saw her.
"Mia," my mom said as she fastened on an earring, "nobody is asking you to be Vicky, the captain’s daughter."
"Grandmère is!"
"Your grandmother is just trying to prepare you, Mia."
"Prepare me for what? I can’t go to school looking like this, you know," I yelled.
My mom looked kind of confused. "Why not?"
Oh my God. Why me?
"Because," I said, as patiently as I could, "I don’t want anyone at school finding out I’m the princess of Genovia!"
My mom shook her head. "Mia, honey, they’re going to find out sometime."
I don’t see how. See, I have it all worked out: I’ll only be a princess in Genovia, and since the chances of anybody I know from school ever actually going to Genovia are like none, no one here will ever find out, so I’m totally safe from being branded a freak, like Tina Hakim Baba. Well, at least not the kind of freak who has to ride in a chauffeured limo to school every day and be followed by bodyguards.
"Well," my mom said, after I’d told her all this. "What if it’s in the newspaper?"
"Why would it be in the newspaper?"
My mom looked at my dad. My dad looked away and took a sip from his drink.
You wouldn’t believe what he did next. He put down his drink, then he reached into his pants pocket, took out his Prada wallet, opened it, and asked, "How much?"
I was shocked. So was my mom.
"Phillipe," she said, but my dad just kept looking at me.
"I’m serious, Helen," he said. "I can see the compromise we drew up is getting us nowhere. The only solution in matters like these is cold, hard cash. So how much do I have to pay you, Mia, to let your grandmother turn you into a princess?"
"Is that what she’s doing?" I started yelling some more. "Well, if that’s what she’s doing, she has it all screwed up. I never saw a princess with hair this short, or feet as big as mine, who didn’t have breasts!"
My dad just looked at his watch. I guess he had somewhere to go. I bet it was another "interview" with that blond anchorwoman from ABC News.
"Consider it a job," he said, "this learning how to be a princess business. I will pay your salary. Now, how much do you want?"
I started yelling even more about personal integrity and how I refused to sell my soul to the company store, that kind of thing. Stuff I got from some of my mom’s old records. I think she recognized this, since she sort of started slinking away, saying she had to go get ready for her date with Mr. G. My dad shot her the evil eye—he can do it almost as well as Grandmère—and then he sighed and went, "Mia, I will donate one hundred dollars a day, in your name, to—what is it? Oh, yes—Greenpeace, so they can save all the whales they want, if you will make my mother happy by letting her teach you to be a princess."
Well.
That’s an entirely different matter. It would be one thing if he were payingme to have my hair color chemically altered. But paying one hundred dollars per day to Greenpeace? That’s $356,000 per year! In my name! Why, Greenpeace willhave to hire me after I graduate. I practically will have donated a million dollars by that time!
Wait, maybe that’s only $36,500. Where’s my calculator????
Later on Saturday
Well, I don’t know who Lilly Moscovitz thinks she is, but I sure know who she isn’t: my friend. I don’t think anyone who was my friend would be as mean to me as Lilly was tonight. I couldn’t believe it. And all because of myhair!
I guess I could understand it if Lilly was mad at me about something that mattered—like missing the taping of the Ho segment. I mean, I’m like the main cameraperson forLilly Tells It Like It Is. I also do a lot of the prop work. When I’m not there, Shameeka has to do my job as well as hers, and Shameeka is already executive producer and location scout.
So I guess I could see how Lilly might kind of resent the fact that I missed today’s taping. She thinks Ho-Gate—that’s what she’s calling it—is the most important story she’s ever done. I think it’s kind of stupid. Who cares about five cents, anyway? But Lilly’s all, "We’re going to break the cycle of racism that has been rampant in delis across the five boroughs."
Whatever. All I know is, I walked into the Moscovitzes’ apartment tonight, and Lilly took one look at my new hair and was like, "Oh my God, what happened to you?"
Like I had frostbite all over my face, and my nose had turned black and fallen off, like those people who climbed Mt. Everest.
Okay, I knew people were going to freak and stuff when they saw my hair. I totally washed it before I came over, and got all the mousse and goop out of it. Plus I took off all the makeup Paolo had slathered on me, and put on my overalls and high-tops (you can hardly see the quadratic formula anymore). I really thought, except for my hair, I looked mostly normal. In fact, I kind of thought maybe I looked good—for me, I mean.
But I guess Lilly didn’t think so.
I tried to be casual, like it was no big deal. Which it isn’t, by the way. It wasn’t as if I’d had breast implants or something.
"Yeah," I said, taking off my coat. "Well, my grandmother made me go see this guy Paolo, and he—"
But Lilly wouldn’t even let me finish. She was in this state of shock. She went, "Your hair is the same color as Lana Weinberger’s."
"Well," I said. "I know."
"What’s on yourfingers? Are those fake fingernails? Lana has those, too!" She stared at me all bug-eyed. "Oh my God, Mia. You’re turning into Lana Weinberger!"
Now, that kind of peeved me off. I mean, in the first place, I amnot turning into Lana Weinberger. In the second place, even if I am, Lilly’s the one who’s always going on about how stupid people are for not seeing that it doesn’t matter what anybody looks like; what matters is what’s going on on the inside.
So I stood there in the Moscovitzes’ foyer, which is made out of black marble, with Pavlov jumping up and down against my legs because he was so excited to see me, going, "It wasn’t me. It was my grandmother. I had to—"
"What do you mean, you had to?" Lilly got this really crabby look on her face. It was the same look she gets every year when our PE instructor tells us we have to run around the reservoir in Central Park for the Presidential Fitness test. Lilly doesn’t like to run anywhere, particularly around the reservoir in Central Park (it’s really big).
"What are you?" she wanted to know. "Completely passive? You’re mute or something? Unable to say the wordno? You know, Mia, we really need to work on your assertiveness. You seem to have real issues with your grandmother. I mean, you certainly don’t have any trouble saying no tome. I could have really used your help today with the Ho segment, and you totally let me down. But you’ve got no problem letting your grandmother cut off all your hair and dye it yellow—"
Okay, now keep in mind I’d just spent the whole day hearing how bad I looked—at least, until Paolo got ahold of me and made me look like Lana Weinberger. Now I had to hear there was something wrong with my personality, too.
So I cracked. I said, "Lilly,shut up."
I have never told Lilly to shut up before. Not ever. I don’t think I have ever told anyone to shut up before. It’s just not something I do. I don’t know what happened, really. Maybe it was the fingernails. I never had fingernails before. They sort of made me feel strong. I mean, really, why was Lillyalways telling me what to do?
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