Sweet Sixteen Princess

by Meg Cabot

  WOMYNRULE: But things with Boris were so boring. I mean, where could it go?

  ILUVROMANCE: Um. Ahem.

  WOMYNRULE: Sorry. I’m sure things with you and Boris are totally different.

  ILUVROMANCE: Dang straight.

  WOMYNRULE: But you know what I mean. Things with J. P. are still so…well…you know.

  Did we ever. Because Lilly can talk of hardly anything else. I had never seen her so besotted for a guy. I suppose because J. P. keeps her guessing as to what his real feelings for her are. It seems like all I ever hear from her these days—when she isn’t going on about her hatred for Andy Milonakis—is Do you think he likes me? I mean, we go out, and stuff, and we kiss, but he doesn’t say stuff, you know, about how he feels about me. Do you think that’s weird? I mean, what kind of guy doesn’t talk about his feelings? Well, okay, I know MOST guys don’t talk about their feelings. But I mean, what guy who goes to AEHS doesn’t want to talk about his feelings? Who isn’t gay, I mean?

  As if I’m supposed to know.

  ILUVROMANCE: Has he still not said the L word, Lilly?

  WOMYNRULE: He hasn’t even said the G word. As in, that I’m his girlfriend.

  FTLOUIE: Have YOU said the L word to HIM? Or the B word?

  WOMYNRULE: Of COURSE not. We’ve only been going out for a little over a month. I don’t want to scare him off.

  FTLOUIE: Faint heart never won fair lady.

  WOMYNRULE: Stop quoting Gilbert and Sullivan at me. I want him to say the L word first. Is that such a crime? WHY WON’T HE SAY IT????

  ILUVROMANCE: Well, you know J. P. has always been something of a loner. He probably just doesn’t know how to act around girls.

  WOMYNRULE: Do you really think so?

  FTLOUIE: Totally. Oh my God, you guys, check it out: J. P.’s like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, you know, when Belle first comes to live in the palace, and the Beast is all mean to her? Because, just like the Beast was alone in his castle for all those years, J. P. sat by himself at a lunch table for a really long time, so maybe he isn’t entirely sure how people are supposed to interact, because he hasn’t had all that much experience with human interaction—JUST LIKE THE BEAST!!! So he may come off as gruff or nonemotional, when I’m sure the opposite is true—JUST LIKE THE BEAST!!!!

  WOMYNRULE: Mia, I know Beauty and the Beast is your favorite musical, and all. But I think that’s sort of stretching it.

  ILUVROMANCE: No, I think Mia is right. All J. P. needs is the right woman to unlock his heart—which up until now he has kept in a cold, hard shell for his own emotional protection—and he will be like an unstoppable volcano of passion.

  WOMYNRULE: In that case, why hasn’t he exploded already? Unless you’re implying I’m not the right woman to unlock his heart.

  ILUVROMANCE: I’m not saying that! I’m just saying that it won’t be easy.

  FTLOUIE: Yeah. Like it wasn’t easy for Belle to win the Beast’s trust.

  WOMYNRULE: Whatever! It took her, like, two songs!

  ILUVROMANCE: Yeah, but real life isn’t like a musical. Unfortunately.

  FTLOUIE: Maybe if you said you loved him first, it would cause the first crack in his hard outer shell….

  WOMYNRULE: I AM NOT SAYING I LOVE HIM FIRST!!!!

  SKINNERBX: Mia? Are you still there?

  My boyfriend! I had gotten so involved talking about Lilly’s boyfriend, I totally forgot about my own!

  FTLOUIE: Of course I am. Hang on a minute.

  FTLOUIE: You guys, I have to go, but one last thing: I AM NOT HAVING A SWEET SIXTEEN PARTY AND THAT’S FINAL. GOT IT?

  WOMYNRULE: God, alright already. You don’t have to shout.

  ILUVROMANCE: Mia, no one wants you to do anything you don’t want to do. But your sweet sixteen IS a big deal….

  FTLOUIE: NO PARTY.

  WOMYNRULE: Well, better make sure your grandma knows that, then.

  FTLOUIE: Wait. What is THAT supposed to mean?

  WOMYNRULE: Nothing. I have to go now.

  FTLOUIE: LILLY!!! ARE YOU AND GRANDMÈRE PLOTTING SOMETHING BEHIND MY BACK AGAIN????

  WOMYNRULE: terminated

  FTLOUIE: I’m going to kill her.

  ILUVROMANCE: She can’t help it. You know how upset she’s been since her parents’ separation. Not to mention this Andy Milonakis thing. And the fact that J. P. won’t admit his true feelings for her. Oops, I hear my mom calling. I have to go. Bye!

  ILUVROMANCE: terminated

  Great. Just great.

  FTLOUIE: Michael, do you know if your sister and my grandmother are planning something for my birthday? Like a surprise party?

  SKINNERBX: Not that I’m aware of. Can you imagine what kind of party those two would come up with?

  Actually, I can:

  The kind of party I’d really, really hate.

  Thursday, April 29, Homeroom

  I asked my mom at breakfast this morning if Grandmère and Lilly were planning a surprise party for my sweet sixteen, and she choked on her fresh-squeezed OJ from Papaya King and went, “Sweet Jesus, I hope not.”

  To which Mr. Gianini added, “Don’t expect me to chaperone if they are. I saw enough grinding at the Nondenominational Winter Dance this year to last me a lifetime.”

  Which is true. Grinding does seem to be all the rage around Albert Einstein High lately. I wish it were krumping, instead. But no. My peers (all except for Michael, who is opposed to grinding for reasons he has yet to share with me, beyond saying it’s “stupid looking”) seem only to want to rub their private parts against one another.

  Too bad they won’t let us do THAT in PE.

  “I thought you didn’t want a party this year,” my mom said. “Because of what happened at your party last year.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “But, you know…people don’t always listen to me.”

  By people, of course, I meant Grandmère. As my mom well knew.

  “Well, you can rest easy,” my mom said. “I haven’t heard anything about Lilly and your grandmother planning any party.”

  I quizzed Lilly at length about my suspicions in the limo on the way to school, but she never once cracked.

  Perhaps I was only imagining the whole Grandmère/Lilly plot to fete me against my will.

  Which isn’t any wonder, really, if you think about all the stuff they’ve gotten up to behind my back in the past. Really, they are like the Snape/Malfoy pairing of the Muggle world. Only without the capes.

  Thursday, April 29, Gifted and Talented

  I observed J. P. closely all through lunch to see if I could detect any signs that he might explode in a volcano of passion, as Tina suggested he was going to someday.

  He must have noticed me staring at him though, because at one point when Lilly got up to get a second helping of mac and cheese (her mother’s low-carb diet has had the opposite effect she’d evidently hoped for where Lilly is concerned—it has only turned Lilly into even more of a raging carboholic), he looked at me and went, “Mia. Do I have something on my face?”

  I was like, “No. Why?”

  “Because you keep looking at me.”

  Busted! How embarrassing!

  “Sorry,” I muttered into my Diet Coke, hoping he wouldn’t notice how I was blushing. Only how could he not, under the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent overheads? (Note to self: Look into cost of getting new, more flattering lighting in caf.) “I was just…checking something.”

  “Checking what?”

  “Nothing,” I said hastily, and dug into my bean salad.

  “Mia,” J. P. started to say, in a soft—but deep—voice, that (not surprisingly, considering the fact that Boris, across the table, had his violin out, and was showing Tina, Ling Su, and Perin how easy it was to pluck out the chords to the Foo Fighters’ “Best of You”) only I could hear. “Do you—”

  But he never got to finish whatever it was he was going to say to me, because at that moment Lilly returned.

  “Can you believe they were out
of mac and cheese?” she asked. “I had to settle for four slices of bread and a bag of Doritos.” She seemed to overcome her disappointment pretty quickly, though, if how fast she chowed down those Doritos is any indication.

  I wonder what J. P. was going to say to me?

  I think Tina is definitely right. One of these days, he’s going to blow like Mount Vesuvius. There will be no controlling J. P.’s eruption of passion when it finally happens.

  Thursday, 7 p.m., April 29,

  limo home from the Plaza

  I walked into Grandmère’s suite at the Plaza only to be attacked by this woman with purple hair in a pair of lowriders who went, “Oh, great, she’s here,” and tried to stick a portable microphone pack down the back of my shirt.

  “What are you DOING?” I demanded.

  Fortunately Lars was with me, and he stepped in front of the woman and said, looking down at her all menacingly, “May I help you?”

  Ms. Purple Hair had to crane her neck to see Lars’s face. Apparently she didn’t like what she saw up there, since she took a few stumbling steps backward and went, “Um…Lewis? We’ve got a slight…or, I guess I should say, big—really big—problem.”

  Which is when this skinny guy in a pair of fancy red eyeglasses came hurrying out of Grandmère’s living room, going, “Oh, great, she’s here. Princess Mia, I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Lewis, and this is my assistant, Janine—” He indicated the purple-haired woman, who was still staring up at Lars like she was looking at King Kong, or someone, and seemed unable to utter a sound. “If you’d just let Janine put your mic on, we can go ahead and get started.”

  I didn’t bother asking Lewis what it was we could go ahead and get started. Instead, I went, “Excuse me,” and walked past him, and right up to Grandmère, who was sitting in her pink Louis XV chair with her hair all freshly set, her makeup perfect, and a trembling, nearly hairless toy poodle in her lap.

  “Oh, Amelia, good, you’re here,” she said. “Where’s your mic?”

  “Grandmère,” I said, noticing for the first time the cameraman hovering by her shoulder. “What is going on? Who are these people? Why is that man filming us?”

  “He isn’t going to be able to use any of the footage, Mia, if you don’t put a mic on,” Grandmère said irritably. “Janine! Janine, would you please put a mic on her?”

  Lewis came in, bobbing his spiky-haired head.

  “Um, yes, Your Highness, well, Janine tried, see, but there appears to be a problem—”

  “What problem?” Grandmère demanded imperiously.

  “She, um,” Lewis said, looking scared. But not of Lars. Of Grandmère. “Wouldn’t let Janine put it on her.”

  Grandmère swung the evil eye she’d been focusing on Lewis onto me.

  “Amelia,” she said coldly. “Kindly allow the violet-haired young lady to put a microphone on you, so that we can get this out of the way. I have a dinner engagement I don’t care to miss.”

  “Nobody’s putting anything on me,” I said, so loudly that Rommel, in Grandmère’s lap, put his ears back and whimpered, “until someone explains to me what’s going on.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Lewis said, looking mortified. “I thought you knew. I had no idea. Janine and I—oh, and that’s Rafe, with the camera”—Rafe, a burly guy in a bandanna, waved at me from behind his camera lens—“are from MTV, and you’re currently being filmed for a very special episode of MTV’s hit reality series, My Super Sweet Sixteen.”

  I looked from Lewis to Grandmère to Rafe—I couldn’t see Janine, because she was still out in the foyer with Lars—and back again.

  “What?” I said.

  “My Super Sweet Sixteen is a reality television series on MTV,” Lewis explained, as if that were the part I was having trouble with. “Each week it features a different teen getting ready to celebrate his or her sixteenth birthday party. We film all the preparations leading up to the party, and then the party itself. It’s one of our most popular shows. Surely you’ve seen it.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen it, all right,” I said. “Which is why I’m out of here. Bye.”

  And I started to leave.

  BECAUSE I KNEW IT!!!! I KNEW MY GRANDMOTHER HAD BEEN UP TO SOMETHING!!!!!

  But I didn’t get very far, on account of tripping over a power cord for one of the lights they’d set up.

  Also on account of Grandmère standing up (dislodging a very surprised Rommel, who fortunately, due to years of practice, was able to land on his feet) and saying, “Amelia! Sit down this instant!”

  It’s her voice. There’s just something about that voice that MAKES you do what she says. I don’t know how she does it, but she does.

  I found myself sinking down onto the couch, nursing the shin I’d bonked against her coffee table.

  “That’s better,” Grandmère said in a totally different tone. She sank back down into her fancy pink chair. “Now, let’s try that again. Amelia, these nice people are going to televise your sweet sixteen birthday party on a special edition of their reality series. This will generate a great deal of publicity for the country of Genovia, over which you will one day rule, and which is currently suffering from an almost total lack of American tourists, thanks to the weak dollar and your father’s recent decision to limit the number of cruise ships that may dock there to twelve per week. Now, please allow Janine to put a microphone on you so that we can begin. I don’t want to keep my dinner date waiting. Mr. Castro is a very impatient man.”

  I took a deep breath. Then I went—even though I really, really didn’t want to know—“What sweet sixteen birthday party?”

  “The one I am throwing for you,” Grandmère said. “I shall be flying you and one hundred of your closest friends in the royal jet to Genovia, where you’ll be met at the airport by horse-drawn carriages and taken immediately to the palace for a champagne brunch, followed by an all-expenses-paid shopping trip to boutiques such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton on the Rue de Prince Phillipe for the girls, and a trip to the Genovian beach for private jet ski lessons for the boys. Then it’s back to the palace for massages and fashion and beauty makeovers. Then everyone is invited to a black-tie ball in your honor, at which Destiny’s Child, who have agreed to reunite for one night only on your behalf, will perform their greatest hits. After which I will have everyone flown home the following morning so that they arrive back in America in time for school on Monday.”

  I could only stare at her. I knew my mouth was open. I also knew that Rafe was filming the whole thing.

  But I couldn’t close my mouth. And I couldn’t summon the words to ask Rafe to put his camera down.

  Because I was totally FREAKED!!!!

  Champagne brunches? All-expenses-paid shopping trips to Louis Vuitton? Massages? Destiny’s Child? One hundred of my closest friends?

  I don’t even KNOW one hundred people, much less have that many friends.

  “It’s going to be spectacular,” Lewis said, pulling up a chair so he could peer at me more closely through the lenses of his red-framed glasses—which kind of resembled plastic scissor handles, I noticed. “It’ll be the most fantastic episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen ever. We’re even changing the name of the series just for your episode…we’re calling it My Super ROYAL Sweet Sixteen. Your party, Princess, is going to make every other party ever featured on this show look like a five-year-old’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.”

  “And,” Grandmère said—up close, I could see that she had really layered on the pancake makeup for the benefit of the camera—“it will attract millions of eager tourists to Genovia, once they’ve seen all that our little country has to offer by way of exclusive, high-end shopping, world-class entertainment, seaside recreation opportunities, fine dining, luxury accommodations, and old-world hospitality.”

  I looked from Grandmère to Lewis and then back again, my mouth still open.

  Then I jumped up and ran for the door.

  Thursday, April 29, the loft

  Well, who wouldn’t
have run? This has got to be, hands down, the most disturbing thing she’s ever done. Seriously. I mean, MTV? My Super ROYAL Sweet Sixteen? Has she lost her mind?

  She called Mom to complain, of course. About me. She says I’m being selfish and ungrateful. She says all I ever think about is myself, and that this is a tremendous opportunity for Genovia to finally get some good press after all the negative news stories about it lately, considering the snail thing and almost getting thrown out of the EU, and all. She says if I really cared about the country over which I will someday rule, I would accept her generous gift and agree to be filmed doing so.

  And I DO really care about Genovia. I DO.

  BUT I DO NOT WANT A SWEET SIXTEEN BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!!!

  And I particularly do not want one that is going to be BROADCAST AROUND THE COUNTRY ON MTV!!!!!!!

  Why is that so hard for people to understand????

  At least Mom’s on my side. When she heard what Grandmère (and MTV) had planned, her lips got all small, the way they do when she’s really, really mad. Then she said, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of it.”

  Then she went to make some phone calls.

  To my dad in Genovia, I hope. Or possibly an insane asylum, so that Grandmère can be locked up at last for her own—and my—protection.

  But I suppose that’s a little too much to ask.

  Why can’t I have a NORMAL grandma? One who’d make me a cake for my birthday, instead of hosting a transcontinental royal slumber party for me, and allow a cable network to FILM it?

  WHY?

  Friday, April 30, lunch

  I was regaling everyone at lunch about Grandmère’s crazy scheme—I had purposefully not told anyone about it, including Lilly, just so I could tell everyone about it at the same time, because ever since J. P. started sitting with us at lunch, there’s sort of been this contest between us girls to see who can make him laugh the hardest, because, well, J. P. seems like he could use a laugh, being a bottled-up volcano of passion, and all.