Forever Princess

by Meg Cabot

  Which, think about it, is a serious genetic defect. Being born perfect would turn any kid into a horrible Cloverfield-type monster, just like Lana (well, for the first seventeen years of her life, considering how awful she was until I tamed her a bit). I mean, if you’re born perfect, like Lana, you never have to learn any coping mechanisms, the way I did growing up. Because beautiful people can often coast along on their looks, never having to develop a sense of humor, or compassion for others, or anything like that. Why would they have to? They’re perfect. If you’re born aesthetically beautiful, the way J.P. and my kids would be, basically, you’re a monster…and my genes know it.

  That’s why whenever J.P. kisses me, I don’t get that thrill I always did when Michael kissed me…MY GENES DON’T WANT ME TO GIVE BIRTH TO GENETIC MONSTERS!!!!!

  What am I going to do?????? I am scheduled to have sex in less than two days with a guy with whom I am a complete MHC match!

  AND THAT IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT MAJOR HISTOCOMPATIBILITY COMPLEX IS ALL ABOUT!

  My MHC mismatch is someone who broke up with me almost two years ago!

  And who, despite what my grandmother and best friend seem to think, does NOT love me, but really just does want to be friends.

  True, J.P. and I have so much in common personality-wise—we both like creative writing, and Beauty and the Beast, and drama.

  While Michael and I basically have nothing in common except a deep and abiding love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars (the original three movies, not the hideous prequels).

  And yet I might as well admit, I have an insufferable weakness for him. Yes! I do! I cannot resist the way he smells. I am drawn to him the way the American public is drawn to Tori Spelling.

  I have got to fight this. I can’t allow myself to feel this way about a boy who is so incredibly wrong for me (except, of course, genetically).

  But what if I’m not strong enough?

  Thursday, May 4, Psych final

  Mia, is it true? Is J.P.’s play really going to be a movie?

  Ahhhhh! You scared me! I don’t have time to talk about this now, Tina. I just figured out J.P. and I are total MHC mismatches…or, matches, really. Our children are going to be perfect genetic mutants, like Lana! And that Michael’s my MHC match! That’s why I’ve always been obsessed with how his neck smells! And why whenever I’m around him, I act like a total blithering idiot. Tina, I am a dead woman.

  Mia…are you on drugs?

  No—don’t you see what this means? It explains EVERYTHING! Why I’ve never felt attracted to J.P…. Why I can’t let Michael go…Oh, Tina, I’m being held hostage by my own MHC. I’ve got to FIGHT it. Will you help?

  Do you need help? Because I could call Dr. Knutz.

  No! Tina—Look. Just…never mind. I’m fine. Pretend I never said anything.

  Why does everyone always think I’m crazy when I’ve never been saner in my life? Can’t Tina—can’t everyone—see that I’m just a woman who’s busy trying to take care of business? I’m eighteen now. I know what I have to do to get things done.

  Or, as in this case—not done, I guess. Because there’s nothing I can do about this.

  Except stay far, far away from Michael Moscovitz.

  I just can’t believe I bought J.P. all that cologne. When it turned out cologne had nothing to do with it in the first place. It was his genes all along.

  Who knew?

  Well…me, I guess. I just didn’t put it all together until the test today.

  I guess I have had a lot on my mind, what with trying to get my dad elected and pick a college and all.

  I blame the educational system in this country. Why did they wait until the last semester my senior year to tell me all this—about MHC, I mean? This is information that might have been useful to me, oh, I don’t know, around about ninth grade, maybe!

  The big question now is: How am I going to avoid smelling Michael during lunch tomorrow?

  I don’t know. I guess I’ll just stay as far away from him as I can. I certainly won’t hug him this time. If he asks for a hug, I’ll just say I have a cold.

  Yes! That’s it. And I don’t want him to catch it.

  God. Genius.

  I can’t believe Kenneth is our class valedictorian. It should really be me. If they gave out class valedictorian for LIFE lessons, it would be.

  Thursday, May 4, Lunch

  Dad just called with more Moscovitz news.

  This time it was about Lilly.

  Seriously, I should stop purchasing food here, since I’m only going to end up dropping it on the floor. Although since tomorrow is Senior Skip Day…I guess this is the last day I’m going to have this particular problem.

  “Do you remember how she was filming everyone at your party?” Dad asked, when I picked up the phone, convinced this time Grandmère really had keeled over.

  “Yeah…” I was picking bits of salad out of my hair. Everybody else was giving me the evil eye, picking bits of salad out of their own hair. Though it wasn’t my fault, really, I’d dropped my Fiesta Taco Bowl.

  “Well, she’s crafted a campaign commercial from the footage. It began airing on Genovian television last night at midnight.”

  I groaned. Everyone looked politely inquisitive—except J.P. He got a call on his own cell phone at that exact moment.

  “It’s Sean,” he said apologetically. “I’ve got to take this. I’ll be right back.” He got up to go take the call outside, away from the din of the caf.

  “How bad’s the damage?” I asked. Dad’s numbers had gotten a little better since Michael’s donation, and the press Dad had received because of it.

  But René was still leading in the polls.

  “No,” Dad said. He sounded strange. “You don’t understand, Mia. Her commercial’s in support of me. Not against me.”

  “What?” I asked him breathlessly. “What did you say?”

  “That’s right,” Dad said. “I just thought you should know. I’ve e-mailed you a link to it. It’s really lovely, actually. I can’t imagine how she accomplished it. You said she has her own show in Korea, or something? I suppose she had her people there put it together, and then they had someone over here—”

  “Dad,” I said, my chest feeling tight. “I’ve got to go….”

  I hung up, then went straight to my e-mail. Scrolling through all the hysterical messages from Grandmère about what I was going to wear to the prom and then the next day, to graduation (like it even matters, since I’ll have my graduation gown on over whatever it is), I found Dad’s e-mail and clicked on it. The link to Lilly’s commercial was there, and I clicked on that. The ad began to play.

  And he was right. It was lovely. It was a sixty-second clip featuring all the celebrities from my party—the Clintons, the Obamas, the Beckhams, Oprah, Brad and Angelina, Madonna, Bono, and more—all saying sweet, very sincere-sounding things about my dad, about stuff he’d done for Genovia in the past, and how Genovian voters ought to support him. Interspersed between the brief celebrity endorsements were gorgeous shots of Genovia (which I realized Lilly had taken during her many trips with me there), of the blue sparkling waters of the bay, the green cliffs above it, the white beaches, and the palace, all looking pristine and untouched by touristy schlock.

  At the end of the ad, some curlicue script came on that said, “Preserve Genovia’s historic wonder. Vote for Prince Phillipe.”

  By the time the music—which I recognized as a ballad Michael had written, way back in his Skinner Box days—had ended, I was almost in tears.

  “Oh my God, you guys,” I said. “You have to see this.”

  And then I passed around my cell phone and showed them all. Soon the whole table was almost in tears. Well, except J.P., who hadn’t come back yet, and Boris, who is immune to emotion unless it involves Tina.

  “Why would she do that?” Tina wanted to know.

  “She used to be cool,” Shameeka said. “Remember? Then something happened.”

 
“I have to find her,” I said, still blinking back tears.

  “Find who?” J.P. asked. He’d finally returned from his Sean Penn call.

  “Lilly,” I said. “Look what she did.” I handed him my cell phone so he could watch the commercial she’d made. He did, a frown on his face.

  “Well,” he said, when it was over. “That was…nice.”

  “Nice? It’s amazing,” I said. “I have to thank her.”

  “I really don’t think you do,” J.P. said. “She owes you. After that website she made up about you. Remember?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said.

  “Yeah,” J.P. said. “Even so. I’d watch out, if I were you. She’s still a Moscovitz.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. J.P. shrugged. “Well, you of all people should know, Mia. You have to imagine Lilly wants something in return for her apparent generosity. Michael always did, didn’t he?”

  I stared at him in complete shock.

  On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was talking about Michael, the boy who’d broken my heart into so many little pieces…pieces J.P. had so kindly helped put back together again.

  Before I had a chance to say anything, though, Boris said, from absolutely nowhere, “Funny, I hadn’t noticed that. Michael’s letting me live with him next semester for absolutely nothing.”

  This caused all of us to swivel our heads around to stare at him as if he were a parking meter that had suddenly magically begun speaking.

  Tina was the first one of us to recover.

  “WHAT?” she demanded of her boyfriend. “You’re living with Michael Moscovitz next semester?”

  “Yeah,” Boris said, looking surprised she didn’t know it. “I didn’t hand in my housing registration to Juilliard on time, and they ran out of singles. And I’m not going to live with a ROOMMATE. So Michael said I could crash in his spare bedroom until a single opens up for me on the waiting list. He’s got a kick-ass loft, you know, on Spring Street. It’s huge. He won’t even know I’m there.”

  I glanced at Tina. Her eyes were bigger than I’d ever seen them. I wasn’t sure if it was with rage or bewilderment.

  “So all this time,” Tina said, “you’ve secretly gone on being friends with Michael behind Mia’s back? And you never told me?”

  “There’s nothing secret about it,” Boris said, looking offended. “Michael and I’ve always been friends, since I was in his band. It has nothing to do with Mia. You don’t stop being friends with a guy just because he’s broken up with his girlfriend. And there’s lots of stuff I don’t tell you about. Guy stuff. And you shouldn’t be stressing me out today, I have my concert tonight, I’m supposed to be taking it easy—”

  “Guy stuff?” Tina said, picking up her purse. “You don’t have to tell me about guy stuff? Fine. You want to take it easy? You don’t want to be stressed? No problem. Why don’t I just relieve all your stress? By leaving.”

  “Tee,” Boris said, rolling his eyes.

  But when she stormed from the caf in a huff, he realized she was serious. And he had to hurry to chase after her.

  “Those two,” J.P. said, with a chuckle, when they were gone.

  “Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t chuckling, though. I was remembering something that had happened nearly two years ago, when Boris had come up to me and urged me to write back to Michael, when he kept writing to me, but I didn’t trust myself to write back. I’d wondered then how Boris even knew Michael had been writing to me. I thought it was because Tina had told him.

  Now I wondered if I’d been wrong. Maybe Michael had told him. Because the two of them had been in communication.

  About me.

  What if Boris, scraping away on his violin in the supply closet while the two of us were in Gifted and Talented together, had been spying on me for Michael the whole time?

  And now Michael’s giving him free room and board in his fancy SoHo loft to pay him back!

  Or am I reading too much into this—as usual?

  And I don’t think that’s true, what J.P. said, about the Moscovitzes always wanting something in return. I mean, yes, Michael wanted to have sex back when we were dating (if that’s what he was implying…and I think it was).

  But the truth is, so did I. Maybe I wasn’t as ready for it emotionally then as I am now. But we couldn’t exactly help being attracted to each other.

  And now I finally realize why!

  This is all just so confusing. Honestly, what is going on? Why did Lilly make that commercial for Dad? Why did Michael donate the CardioArm?

  Why is everyone in the Moscovitz family being so nice to me all of a sudden?

  Thursday, May 4, 2 p.m., the hallway

  I’m cleaning out my locker.

  Tomorrow is Senior Skip Day (although technically not an officially school-sanctioned holiday), and I’m done with finals, so this is basically the only time I’m going to be able to do this—also the last time I’ll be inside this hellhole (aside from graduation, which will be in Central Park, unless it rains).

  It’s really sad, in a way.

  I guess this place wasn’t really a hellhole. Or at least, it wasn’t always. I had some good times here. At least a few. I’m throwing away tons of old notes from Lilly and Tina (remember when we used to write notes, before we got cell phones, and started texting?) and a lot of things that are stuck together that I can’t identify (seriously, I wish I had cleaned this thing out once or twice before in the past four years. Also, I think a mouse has been in here).

  Here’s a flattened Whitman’s Sampler (empty) someone once gave me. I seem to have eaten everything that was inside it. And here’s a smushed flower of some kind that I’m sure had some kind of significance at some point but now it’s kind of moldy. Why can’t I take better care of my things? I should have pressed it neatly between the pages of a book the way Grandmère taught me, and noted what kind of flower it was and who gave it to me so I could always treasure its memory.

  What’s wrong with me? Why did I jam it in my locker like that? Now it’s rotten and I have no choice but to stuff it in this trash bag Mr. Kreblutz the head custodian has given me.

  I’m a terrible person. Not just because I don’t take better care of my belongings, but because…well, all the other reasons, which should be obvious by now.

  What am I going to do? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

  I looked all over for Lilly, but I couldn’t find her. I suppose she has finals this afternoon.

  (I did find Tina and Boris, though. They made up. At least if the fact that they were making out in the third-floor stairwell means anything. I snuck discreetly away before they noticed me.)

  I guess I could call her (Lilly, I mean). But…I don’t know what I’d say. Thank you? That seems so lame.

  What I want to say is…why? Why are you being so nice to me?

  Maybe I’ll ask her brother at lunch tomorrow. I mean, if he knows. After I warn him about my cold. And to stay far away from me.

  Anyway.

  It feels so weird to be wandering around the halls of this place while everyone else is in class. Principal Gupta totally saw me, too, but she didn’t say anything like, “Why aren’t you in class, Mia? Do you have a pass?” She was just like, “Oh, hello, Mia,” and kept walking by, all distracted. Clearly, she was worrying about graduation (So am I—WHAT COLLEGE AM I GOING TO CHOOSE???) or whatever, and had more pressing matters on her mind than why a princess was roaming around in the halls of her school.

  Either that, or I didn’t look like much of a threat. I guess that’s what happens when you’re a graduating senior.

  With a bodyguard in tow.

  Maybe someday I’ll write a book about this. A senior girl, experiencing conflicting emotions as she cleans out her locker, saying good-bye to the place of higher education she’s known so long…her love/hate relationship with it…She wants to leave it, and yet…she’s afraid to leave it, to spread her wings and start anew somewhere else. She
hates the long, gray, smelly hallways, and yet…she loves them, too. I mean, in a way.

  Einstein Lions, we’re for you

  Come on, be bold, come on, be bold,

  come on, be bold

  Einstein Lions, we’re for you

  Blue and gold, blue and gold,

  blue and gold

  Einstein Lions, we’re for you

  We’ve got a team no one else can ever tame

  Einstein Lions, we’re for you

  Let’s win this game!

  Good-bye, AEHS. You suck. I hate you.

  And yet…somehow I’ll miss you, too.

  Thursday, May 4, 6 p.m., the loft

  Dear Ms. Delacroix,

  Enclosed please find your manuscript, which we are sorry to say we do not believe is the right fit for us at this time. We wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.

  Sincerely,

  Heartland Romance Publications

  I had to hide the above from J.P., who’s here right now. He came over after school today. It’s the first time in months he didn’t have play rehearsal or I didn’t have princess lessons or one of us didn’t have therapy.

  So. He came over.

  He’s out in the living room right now, talking to Mom and Mr. G about his movie deal. I’m “changing for Boris’s concert.”

  But, obviously I’m not. I’m writing about what happened when he came over instead. Which is that I totally tried VERY VERY HARD to get my MHCs to respond to his. I did this by doing what Tina did, when she saw Boris in his swimsuit.

  Yes. I jumped his bones.

  Or I tried to, anyway. I just figured, if I could get J.P. to kiss me—really kiss me, the way Michael used to, when we were having a heavy-duty make-out session in his dorm room—maybe everything would be all right. Maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about pretending I have a cold tomorrow when I have lunch with Michael. Maybe I won’t be so super attracted to him anymore.

  But it didn’t work.

  Not that J.P. pushed me away, or anything. He kissed me back, and stuff. He tried. He really did try.