Princess in the Spotlight

by Meg Cabot

  But Grandmère didn’t go for it. I never met anybody who needed to go to Baden-Baden so badly for a little rest and relaxation. Grandmère looks about as relaxed as Fat Louie right after the vet sticks his thermometer you know where in order to take his temperature.

  Of course, this might have had something to do with the fact that Grandmère shaves off her eyebrows and draws on new ones every morning. Don’t ask me why. I mean, she has perfectly good eyebrows. I’ve seen the stubble. But lately I’ve noticed those eyebrows are getting drawn on higher and higher up her forehead, which gives her this look of perpetual surprise. I think that’s because of all her plastic surgeries. If she doesn’t watch it, one of these days her eyelids are going to be up in the vicinity of her frontal lobes.

  And my dad was no help at all. He was asking all these questions about Beverly Bellerieve, like was it true she was Miss America in 1991 and did Grandmère happen to know if she (Beverly) was still going out with Ted Turner, or was that over?

  I swear, for a guy who only has one testicle, my dad sure spends a lot of time thinking about sex.

  We argued about it all through dinner. Like were they going to shoot the interview at the hotel, or back in the loft? If they shot it at the hotel, people would be given a false impression about my lifestyle. But if they shot it at the loft, Grandmère insisted, people would be horrified by the squalor in which my mother has brought me up.

  Which is totally unfair. The loft is not squalid. It just has that nice, lived-in look.

  “Never-been-cleaned look, you mean,” Grandmère said, correcting me. But that isn’t true, because just the other day I Lemon Pledged the whole place.

  “With that animal living there, I don’t know how you can ever get the place really clean,” Grandmère said.

  But Fat Louie isn’t responsible for the mess. Dust, as everyone knows, is 95 percent human skin tissue.

  The only good thing that I can see about all this is that at least the film crew isn’t going to follow me around at school and stuff. That’s one thing to be thankful for, anyway. I mean, could you imagine them filming me being tortured by Lana Weinberger during Algebra? She would so totally start flipping her cheerleading pom-poms in my face, or something, just to show the producers what a wimp I can be sometimes. People all over America would be, like, What is wrong with that girl? Why isn’t she self-actualized?

  And what about G and T? In addition to there being absolutely no teacher supervision in that class, there’s the whole thing with us locking Boris Pelkowski in the supply closet so we don’t have to listen to him practice his violin. That has to be some kind of violation of Haz-mat codes.

  Anyway, the whole time we were arguing about it, a part of my brain was going, Right now, as we’re sitting here arguing over this whole interview thing, fifty-seven blocks away, my mother is breaking the news to her lover—my Algebra teacher—that she is pregnant with his child.

  What was Mr. G going to say? I wondered. If he expressed anything but joy, I was going to sic Lars on him. I really was. Lars would beat up Mr. G for me, and he probably wouldn’t charge me very much for it, either. He has three ex-wives he’s paying alimony to, so he can always use an extra ten bucks, which is all I can afford to pay a hired thug.

  I really need to see about getting more of an allowance. I mean, who ever heard of a princess who only gets ten bucks a week spending money? You can’t even go to the movies on that.

  Well, you can, but you can’t get popcorn.

  The thing is, though, now that I’m back at the loft, I can’t tell whether I will need Lars to beat up my Algebra teacher or not. Mr. G and my mom are talking in hushed voices in her room.

  I can’t hear anything going on in there, even when I press my ear to the door.

  I hope Mr. G takes it well. He’s the nicest guy my mom’s ever dated, despite that F he almost gave me. I don’t think he’ll do anything stupid, like dump her, or try to sue for full custody.

  Then again, he’s a man, so who knows?

  It’s funny, because as I’m writing this, an instant message comes over my computer. It’s from Michael! He writes:

  CRACKING: What was with you at school today? It was like you were off in this whole other world or something.

  I write back:

  FTLOUIE: I don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about. Nothing is wrong with me. I’m totally fine.

  I am such a liar.

  CRACKING: Well, I got the impression that you didn’t hear a word that I said about negative slopes.

  Since I found out my destiny is to rule a small European principality someday, I have been trying really hard to understand Algebra, as I know I will need it to balance the budget of Genovia, and all. So I have been attending review sessions every day after school, and during Gifted and Talented, Michael has been helping me a little, too.

  It’s very hard to pay attention when Michael tutors me. This is because he smells really, really good.

  How can I think about negative slopes when this guy I’ve had a major crush on since, oh, I don’t know—forever practically, is sitting there right next to me, smelling like soap and sometimes brushing my knee with his?

  I reply:

  FTLOUIE: I heard everything you said about negative slopes. Given slope m, +y-intercept (O,b) equation y+mx+b Slope-intercept.

  CRACKING: WHAT???

  FTLOUIE: Isn’t that right?

  CRACKING: Did you copy that out of the back of the book?

  Of course.

  Uh-oh, my mom is at the door.

  Still later on Monday

  My mom came in. I thought Mr. G had left, so I went, “How’d it go?”

  Then I saw she had tears in her eyes, so I went over and gave her this big hug.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “You’ll always have me. I’ll help with everything, the midnight feedings, the diaper changing, everything. Even if it turns out to be a boy.”

  My mom hugged me back, but it turned out she wasn’t crying because she was sad. She was crying because she was so happy.

  “Oh, Mia,” she said. “We want you to be the first to know.”

  Then she pulled me out into the living room. Mr. Gianini was standing there with this really dopey look on his face. Dopey happy.

  I knew before she said it, but I pretended to be surprised anyway.

  “We’re getting married!”

  My mom pulled me into this big group hug between her and Mr. G.

  It’s sort of weird to be hugged by your Algebra teacher. That’s all I have to say.

  Tuesday, October 21, 1 a.m.

  Hey, I thought my mom was a feminist who didn’t believe in the male hierarchy and was against the subjugation and obfuscation of the female identity that marriage necessarily entails.

  At least, that’s what she always used to say when I asked her why she and my dad didn’t ever get married.

  I always thought it’s because he just never asked her.

  Maybe that’s why she told me not to tell anyone just yet. She wants to let my dad know in her own way, she says.

  All of this excitement has given me a headache.

  Tuesday, October 21, 2 a.m.

  Oh, my God. I just realized that if my mom marries Mr. Gianini, it means he’ll be living here. I mean, my mom would never move to Brooklyn, where he lives. She always says the subway aggravates her antipathy toward the corporate hordes.

  I can’t believe it. I’m going to have to eat breakfast every morning with my Algebra teacher.

  And what happens if I accidentally see him naked, or something? My mind could be permanently scarred.

  I’d better make sure the lock on the bathroom door is fixed before he moves in.

  Now my throat hurts, in addition to my head.

  Tuesday, October 21, 9 a.m.

  When I woke up this morning, my throat hurt so much, I couldn’t even talk. I could only croak.

  I tried croaking for my mom for a while, but she couldn’t hear me.
So then I tried banging on the wall, but all that did was make my Greenpeace poster fall down.

  Finally I had no choice but to get up. I wrapped my comforter around me so I wouldn’t get a chill and get even sicker, and went down the hall to my mom’s room.

  To my horror, there was not one lump in my mom’s bed, but TWO!!!! Mr. Gianini stayed over!!!!

  Oh, well. It’s not like he hasn’t already promised to make an honest woman of her.

  Still, it’s a little embarrassing to stumble into your mom’s bedroom at six in the morning and find your Algebra teacher in there with her. I mean, that kind of thing might warp a lesser person than myself.

  But whatever. I stood there croaking in the doorway, totally too freaked out to go in, and finally my mom cracked an eye open. Then I whispered to her that I was sick, and told her that she’d have to call the attendance office and explain that I wouldn’t be in school today.

  I also asked her to call and cancel my limo, and to let Lilly know we wouldn’t be stopping by to pick her up.

  I also told her that if she was going to go to the studio, she’d have to get my dad or Lars (please not Grandmère) to come to the loft and make sure no one tried to kidnap or assassinate me while she was gone and I was in my weakened physical state.

  I think she understood me, but it was hard to tell.

  I tell you, this princess business is no joke.

  Later on Tuesday

  My mom stayed home from the studio today.

  I croaked to her that she shouldn’t. She has a show at the Mary Boone Gallery in about a month, and I know she only has about half the paintings done that she’s supposed to have. If she should happen to succumb to morning sickness, she is one dead realist.

  But she stayed home anyway. I think she feels guilty. I think she thinks my getting sick is her fault. Like all my anxiety over the state of her womb weakened my autoimmune system, or something.

  Which totally isn’t true. I’m sure whatever it is I have, I picked it up at school. Albert Einstein High School is one giant petri dish of bacteria, if you ask me, what with the astonishing number of mouth-breathers who go there.

  Anyway, about every ten minutes, my guilt-ridden mother comes in and asks me if I want anything. I forgot she has a Florence Nightingale complex. She keeps making me tea, and cinnamon toast with the crusts cut off. This is very nice, I must say.

  Except then she tried to get me to let some zinc dissolve on my tongue, as one of her friends told her this is supposedly a good way to combat the common cold.

  That was not so nice.

  She felt bad about it when the zinc made me gag a whole bunch. She even ran down to the deli and bought me one of those king-size Crunch bars to make up for it.

  Later she tried to make me bacon and eggs in order to build up my strength, but there I drew the line: Just because I’m on my deathbed does not mean it’s okay to abandon all of my vegetarian principles.

  My mother just took my temperature. Ninety-nine point six.

  If this were medieval times, I would probably be dead.

  TEMPERATURE CHART

  11:45 a.m.—99.2

  12:14 p.m.—99.1

  1:27 p.m.—98.6

  This stupid thermometer must be broken!

  2:05 p.m.—99.0

  3:35 p.m.—99.1

  Clearly, if this keeps up, I will be unable to be interviewed by Beverly Bellerieve on Saturday.

  YIPPEE!!!

  Even later on Tuesday

  Lilly just stopped by. She brought me all of my homework. She says I look wretched, and that I sound like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. I’ve never seen The Exorcist, so I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t like movies where people’s heads spin around, or where things come bursting out of their stomachs. I like movies with beauty makeovers and dancing.

  Anyway, Lilly says that the big news at school is that the “It Couple,” Josh Richter and Lana Weinberger, got back together, after having been broken up one whole entire week (a personal record for the both of them: Last time they broke up, it was for only three days). Lilly says when she went by my locker to get my books, Lana was standing there in her cheerleader uniform, waiting for Josh, whose locker is next to mine.

  Then, when Josh showed up, he laid a big wet one on Lana that Lilly swears was the equivalent to an F5 on the Fujimoto scale of tornado suck zone intensity, making it impossible for Lilly to close my locker door again (how well I know that problem). Lilly resolved the situation pretty quickly, however, by accidentally-on-purpose stabbing Josh in the spine with the tip of her number two pencil.

  I thought about telling Lilly my own Big News: you know, about my mom and Mr. G. I mean, she’s going to find out about it anyway.

  Maybe it was the infection coursing through my body, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t bear the thought of what Lilly might say regarding the potential size of my future brother’s or sister’s nostrils.

  Anyway, I have about a ton of homework. Even the father of my unborn sibling, who you would think would feel an iota of sympathy toward me, loaded me down with it. I tell you, there isn’t a single perk to having your mother engaged to your Algebra teacher. Not a single one.

  Well, except when he comes over for dinner and helps me with the assignment. He doesn’t give me the answers, though, so I mostly get sixty-eights. And that’s still a D.

  And I am really sick now! My temperature has gone up to ninety-nine point eight! Soon it will reach one hundred.

  If this were an episode of ER, they’d have practically put me on a respirator already.

  There is no way I’ll be able to be interviewed by Beverly Bellerieve now. NO WAY.

  Tee hee.

  My mom has her humidifier in here, going on full blast. Lilly says my room is just like Vietnam, and why don’t I at least crack the window, for God’s sake.

  I never thought of it before, but Lilly and Grandmère sort of have a lot in common. For instance, Grandmère called a little while ago. When I told her how sick I was, and how I probably wouldn’t be able to make it to the interview on Saturday, she actually chastised me.

  That’s right. Chastised me, like it was my fault I got sick. Then she starts going on about how on her wedding day she had a fever of one hundred and two, but did she let that stop her from standing through a two-hour wedding ceremony, then riding in an open coach through the streets of Genovia waving to the populace, and then dining on prosciutto and melon at her reception and waltzing until four in the morning?

  No, you might not be too surprised to learn. It did not.

  That, Grandmère said, is because a princess does not use poor health as an excuse to shirk her duties to her people.

  As if the people of Genovia care about my doing some lousy interview for Twenty-Four/Seven. They don’t even get that show there. I mean, except for the people who have satellite dishes, maybe.

  Lilly is just about as unsympathetic as Grandmère. In fact, Lilly isn’t really a very soothing visitor to have at all when you are sick. She suggested that it was possible that I have consumption, just like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I said I thought it was probably only bronchitis, and Lilly said that’s probably what Elizabeth Barrett Browning thought, too, before she died.

  HOMEWORK

  Algebra: problems at the end of Chapter 10

  English: in your journal, list your favorite TV

  show, movie, book, food, etc.

  World Civ: one thousand word essay explaining

  the conflict between Iran and Afghanistan

  G&T: as if

  French: ecrivez une vignette amusant (Oh, right)

  Biology: endocrine system (get answers from Kenny)

  God! What are they trying to do over there, anyway? Kill me?

  Wednesday, October 22

  This morning my mom called my dad where he’s staying at the Plaza, and made him bring the limo over so I could go to the doctor. This is because when she took my temperature after I
woke up, it was one hundred and two, just like Grandmère’s on her wedding day.

  Only I can tell you, I didn’t feel much like waltzing. I could hardly even get dressed. I was so feverish I actually put on one of the outfits Grandmère bought me. So there I was in Chanel from head to toe, with my eyes all glassy and this sheen of sweat all over me. My dad jumped about a foot and a half when he saw me, I think because he thought for a minute that I was Grandmère.

  Only of course I am much taller than Grandmère. Though my hair isn’t as big.

  It turns out that Dr. Fung is one of the few people in America who hadn’t heard yet that I’m a princess, so we had to sit in the waiting room for like ten minutes before he could see me. My dad spent the ten minutes talking to the receptionist. That’s because she was wearing an outfit that showed her navel, even though it is practically winter.

  And even though my dad is completely bald and wears suits all the time instead of khakis like a normal dad, you could tell the receptionist was completely into him. That’s because in spite of his incipient European-ness, my dad is still something of a hottie.

  Lars, who is also a hottie in a different sort of way (being extremely large and hairy), sat next to me, reading Parenting magazine. I could tell he would have preferred the latest copy of Soldier of Fortune, but they don’t have a subscription to that at the SoHo Family Medical Practice.

  Finally Dr. Fung saw me. He took my temperature (101.7) and felt my glands to see if they were swollen (they were). Then he tried to take a throat culture to check for strep.

  Only when he jabbed that thing into my throat, it made me gag so hard, I started coughing uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop coughing, so I told him between coughs that I was going to get a drink of water. I think I must have been delusional because of my fever and all, since what I did instead of getting water was walk right out of the doctor’s office. I got back into the limo and told the chauffeur to take me to Emerald Planet right away, so I could get a smoothie.