by Meg Cabot
So, anyway, we were going along, doing the princess lesson thing - you know, Grandmere was instructing me about all the personages I was going to meet at this black-and-white ball, including this year's crop of debutantes, the daughters of
socialites and other so-called American royalty, who were 'coming out' to Society with a capital S, and looking for husbands (even though what they should be looking for, if you ask me, is a good undergraduate programme, and maybe a part-time job teaching illiterate homeless people to read - but that's just me) when all of a sudden it occurred to me - the solution to my problem:
Why couldn't Michael be my escort to the Contessa Trevanni's black-and-white ball?
OK, granted, it was no Star Wars. And yeah, he'd have to get his hands on a tux and all. But at least we would be together.
At least I could still give him his birthday present somewhere outside of the cinderblock walls of Albert Einstein High. At least
I wouldn't have to cancel altogether. At least the state of diplomatic affairs between Genovia and Monaco would remain at DEFCON 5.
But how, I wondered, was I ever going to get Grandmere to go along with it? I mean, she hadn't said anything about the contessa letting me bring a date.
Still, what about all those debutantes? Weren't they bringing dates? Wasn't that what West Point Military Academy was for? Providing dates for debutante balls? And if those girls could bring dates, and they weren't even princesses, why couldn't I?
How I was going to get Grandmere to let me bring Michael to the black-and-white ball, after all of our long discussions about how you mustn't let the object of your affection even know that you like him, was going to be a major obstacle. I decided I would have to exercise some of the diplomatic tact Grandmere had taken so much trouble to teach me.
'And please, whatever else you do, Amelia,' Grandmere was saying, as she sat there running a metal comb through Rommel's sparse - and getting sparser - fur, as the royal Genovian vet had instructed, 'do not stare too long at the contessa's facelift. I know it will be difficult - it looks as if the surgeon botched it horribly. But actually, it's exactly the way Elena wanted it to look. Apparently she has always fancied resembling an anteater—'
'Listen, about this dance, Grandmere,' I started in, all subtly. 'Do you think the contessa would mind if I, you know, brought someone?'
Grandmere looked at me confusedly over Rommel's pink, trembling body. 'What do you mean? Amelia, I highly doubt your mother would have a very nice time at the contessa Trevanni's black-and-white ball. For one thing, there won't be any other hippy radicals there . . .'
'Not my mom,' I said, realizing that perhaps I had been a little too subtle. 'I was thinking more, you know, of an escort.'
'But you already have an escort.' Grandmere adjusted Rommel's diamond-chip-encrusted collar.
'I do?' I did not recall asking anyone to scrounge up a West Pointer for me.
'Of course you do,' Grandmere said, still not, I noticed, meeting my gaze. 'Prince Rene has very generously offered to serve as your escort to the ball. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. About the contessa's taste in clothes. I think you've learned enough by now to know that you aren't to comment - at least to her face - on what your hostess happens to be wearing. But I think it necessary to warn you that the contessa has a tendency to wear clothes that are somewhat young on her, and that reveal—'
'Rene is going to be my escort?' I stood up, nearly knocking Grandmere's maid, who'd come to refresh her mistress's
Sidecar, off her feet as I did so. 'Rene is taking me to the black-and-white ball?'
'Well, yes,' Grandmere said, looking blandly innocent — a little too blandly innocent, if you asked me. 'He is, after all, a stranger to the city — to this country, as a matter of fact. I would think that you, Amelia, would be only too happy to make
him feel welcome and wanted . . .'
I narrowed my eyes at her. 'What is going on here?' I demanded. 'Grandmere, are you trying to fix up Prince Rene and me?'
'Certainly not,' Grandmere said, looking genuinely appalled by the suggestion. But then, I'd been fooled by Grandmere's expressions before. Especially the one she puts on when she wants you to think that she is just a helpless old lady. 'Your imagination most definitely conies from your mother's side of the family. Your father was never as fanciful as you are, Amelia, for which I can only thank God. He'd have driven me to an early grave, I'm convinced of it, if he'd been half as capricious as you tend to be, young lady.'
'Well, what else am I supposed to think?' I asked, feeling a little sheepish over my outburst. After all, the idea that Grandmere might, even though I am only fourteen, be trying to fix me up with some prince that she wants me to marry is a little outlandish.
I mean, even for Grandmere. Still, if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck ... 'I mean, first that thing with making us dance together
'For a magazine pictorial,' Grandmere sniffed.
'. . . and then your not liking Michael. . .'
'I never said I didn't like him. I think he is a perfectly charming boy. I just want you to be realistic about the fact that you, Amelia, are not like other girls. You are a princess, and have the good of your country to think of.'
'... and then Rene showing up like this, and your announcing that he's taking me to the black-and-white ball...'
'Is it wrong of me to want to see the poor boy have a nice time while he is here? He has suffered so many hardships, losing
his ancestral home, not to mention his own principality.'
'Grandmere,' I said. 'Rene's principality got absorbed into Italy, like, three hundred years ago. He wasn't even alive when it happened.'
'A man without a country,' Grandmere said, 'is like a man without a soul.'
Great. And this is my date for the Contessa Trevanni's black-and-white ball. A man without a soul. What next, I ask you? Brunch with Count Dracula?
And what am I supposed to do now? About Michael, I mean? I can't bring both him and Prince Rene to the ball. I mean,
I look weird enough, with my half-grown-out hair and my androgyny (although judging by Grandmere's description of her,
the contessa might look even weirder than I do) without hauling two dates and a bodyguard around with me.
This new year is not turning out to be very propitious for any of us. I mean, first Tina sprains her ankle, then loses her one
true love; then I get saddled with Prince Rene, a black-and-white ball, and the realization that I am one hundred percent not talented at anything . . . well, except for maybe one thing, only I don't know what it is, and the person who does know won't tell me because I am supposed to figure it out on my own.
But I can't even figure out how to explain to my boyfriend that I can't make our very first date with one another. How am I supposed to figure out what my secret talent is?????
Wednesday, January 20,
The Loft
Well, my mom getting hold of my dad was a washout. Apparently the whole parking fees debate has gotten way out of
control. The Minister of Tourism is conducting a filibuster, and there can't be a vote until he stops talking and sits down. So
far he's been talking for twelve hours, forty-eight minutes. I don't know why my dad doesn't just have him arrested and put
in the dungeon. According to my mom, that would be a violation of the minister's right to free speech. But what about my
dad's right to take phone calls from the mother of his only child? Who is safeguarding that right, I would like to know?
I am really starting to be afraid that I am not going to be able to get out of this ball thingy.
'You better let Michael know,' my mom just poked her head in to say, helpfully, 'that you won't be able to make it Friday.
Hey, are you writing in your journal again? Aren't you supposed to be doing your homework?'
Trying to change the subject from my homework (hello, I am totally doing it, I am just taking a break right now), I went,
'Mia,' my mom said, 'Michael is not going to break up with you just because you have a familial commitment you cannot
get out of.'
'I wouldn't be so sure,' I said, darkly. 'Dave Farouq El-Abar broke up with Tina today because she didn't return his call.'
'That's different,' my mom said. 'It's just plain rude not to return someone's calls.'
'But Mom,' I said. I was getting tired of having to explain this stuff to my mom all the time. It is a wonder to me she ever got
a single guy in the first place, let alone two of them, when she clearly knows so little about the art of dating. 'If you are too available, the guy might think all the thrill has gone out of the chase.'
My mother looked suspicious. 'Don't tell me. Let me guess. Your grandmother told you that?'
'Urn,' I said. 'Yes.'
'Well, let me give you a little tip my mother once gave me,' my mom said. I was surprised. My mom doesn't get along so well with her parents, Mamaw and Papaw, who run the Handy Dandy Hardware Store of Versailles, Indiana. It is rare that she mentions either of them ever giving her a piece of advice worthy of passing down to her own daughter, as my mom ran away from home as soon as she was financially able to, and has only been back there, like, twice.
'If you think there's a chance you might have to cancel on Michael for Friday night,' she said, 'you'd better cat-on-the-roof
him now.'
I was understandably perplexed by this. 'Cat on the whatta?'
'Cat on the roof,' my mother said. 'You need to begin mentally preparing him for the disappointment. For instance, if
something had happened to Fat Louie while you were in Genovia—' My mouth must have fallen open, since my mom went, 'Don't worry, nothing did. But I'm just saying, if something had, I would not have blurted it right out to you, over the phone.
I'd have prepared you gently for the eventual letdown. Like I might have said, "Mia, Fat Louie escaped through your window and now he's up on the roof, and we can't get him down".'
'Of course you could get him down,' I protested. 'You could go up by the fire escape and take a pillowcase and when you
get near him, you could throw the pillowcase over him and scoop him up and carry him back down again.'
'Yes,' my mom said. 'But supposing I told you I'd try that. And the next day I called you and said it hadn't worked, Fat Louie had escaped to the neighbour's roof—'
Td tell you to go to the building next door and make someone let you in, then go up to their roof.' I really did not see where
this was going. 'Mom, how could you be so irresponsible as to let Fat Louie out in the first place? I've told you again and
again — you've got to keep my bedroom window closed, you know how he likes to watch the pigeons. Louie doesn't have
any outdoor survival skills . . .'
'So naturally,' my mom said, 'you wouldn't expect him to survive two nights out of doors.'
'No,' I practically wailed. 'I wouldn't.'
'Right. See. So you'd be mentally prepared when I called you on the third day to say despite everything we'd done, Louie
was dead.'
'OH, MY GOD!' I snatched up Fat Louie from where he was lying beside me on the bed. 'And you think I should do that
to poor Michael? He has a dog, not a cat! Pavlov's never going to get up on the roof!'
'No,' my mother said, looking tired. Well, and why not? She was hauling around a dozen or so extra pounds all of a sudden. 'I'm saying you should begin mentally preparing Michael for the disappointment he is going to feel if, indeed, you need to
cancel him on Friday night. Call him and tell him you might not be able to make it. That's all. Cat-on-the-roof him.'
I let Fat Louie go. Not just because I finally realized what my mom was getting at, but because he was trying to bite me in
order to get me to loosen the stranglehold I had on him.
'Oh,' I said. 'You think if I do that - start mentally preparing him for my not being able to go out with him on Friday - he
won't dump me when I get around to breaking the actual news?'
'Mia,' my mom said. 'No boy is going to dump you because you have to cancel a date. If any boy does, then he wasn't
worth going out with anyway. Much like Tina's Dave, I'd venture to say. She's probably better off without him. Now.
Do your homework.'
Only how could anyone expect me to do my homework after imparting a piece of information like that?
Instead I went online. I meant to instant message Michael, but I found that Tina was instant messaging me.
Iluvromance: Hi, Mia. What R U doing?
She sounded so sad! She was even using a blue font!
FtLouie: I'm just doing my Bio. How are you?
Iluvromance: OK, I guess. I just miss him so imichimmmilimiim I wish I had never even
heard of stupid Jane Eyre.
Remembering what my mom had said, I wrote:
FtLouie: Tina, if Dave was willing to break up with you just because you didn't return
his calls, then he was not worthy of you. You will find a new boy, one who
appreciates you.
Iluvromance: Do U really think so?
FtLouie: Absolutely.
Iluvromance: But where am I going to find a boy who appreciates me at AEHS? All the boys
who go there are morons. Except MM of course.
FtLouie: Don't worry, we'll find someone for you. I have to go IM my dad now . . .
I didn't want to tell her that the person I really had to IM was Michael. I didn't want to rub it in that I had a boyfriend and she didn't. Also, I hoped she didn't remember that in Genovia, where my dad was, it was four o'clock in the morning. Also that the Palais de Genovia doesn't have instant messaging.
FtLouie: so TTYL.
Iluvromance: OK, bye. If U feel like chatting later, I'll be here. I have nowhere else
to go.
Poor, sweet Tina! She is clearly prostrate with grief. Really, if you think about it, she is well rid of Dave. If he wanted to leave her for this Jasmine girl so badly, he could have let her down gently by cat-on-the-roofing her. If he were any kind of gentleman, he would have. But it was all too clear now that Dave was no gentleman at all.
I'm glad MY boyfriend is so different. Or at least, I hope he is. No, wait, of course he is. He's MICHAEL.
FtLouie: Hey!
LinuxRulz:Hey back atcha! Where have you been?
FtLouie: Princess lessons.
LinuxRulz:Don't you know everything there is to know about being a princess yet?
FtLouie: Apparently not. Grandmere's got me in for some fine tuning. Speaking of which,
is there, like, a later showing of Star Wars than the seven o'clock?
LinuxRulz:Yeah, there's an eleven. Why?
FtLouie: Oh, nothing.
LinuxRulz: WHY?
But see, here was the part where I couldn't do it. Maybe because of the capital letters, or maybe because my conversation
with Tina was still too fresh in my mind. The unparalleled sadness in her blue U letters was just too much for me. I know I should have just come right out and told him about the ball thingy then and there, only I couldn't go through with it. All I
could think about was how incredibly smart and gifted Michael is, and what a pathetic, talentless freak I am, and how
easy it would be for him to go out and find someone worthier of his attentions.
So instead, I wrote:
FtLouie: I've been trying to think of some names for your band.
LinuxRulz: What does that have to do with whether or not there's a later showing of Star Wars Friday night?
FtLouie: Well, nothing, I guess. Except what do you think of Michael and the Wookies?
FtLouie: Ha ha. OK, how about The Ewoks?
LinuxRulz:The EWOKS? Where did your grandma take you today when she hauled you out of second period? Electric shock therapy?
