“I’ve gotta see this.” Brett, Gillian, and Rashid hung over the flat screen, which showed all of the little avatars we’d made this afternoon crowding into the booth. I’d made mine cute, a little brown anime figure with two ponytails and a two-piece suit (very mini, of course), with sky-high heels. Rashid’s was tall and thin, with a poet shirt and a Heathcliff look. Funny how we see our inner selves, huh? Lissa had made a fairy wearing a bikini, Mac’s was a glowery goth in a torn purple sundress, Gillian had uploaded the character she draws in art class, and Carly was a Regency lady with huge eyes and a tiara.
Brett’s looked exactly like himself, which meant either he had no imagination or he was happy the way he was. I wasn’t going to touch that one.
“Look, here’s how you order drinks and food.” Carly tapped a couple of icons on the screen. Ordering took a couple of seconds, and ten minutes later a girl in a black mini, white dress shirt, and tights appeared with the tray.
Panic! was scheduled to play later—their instruments already stood under the balcony—but I wanted to dance now, and the DJ was fine with me. I dragged Rashid out to a clear space under the hanging paintings and, okay, showed off a few of my moves. But even if he talks like he’s fresh out of finishing school, he dances like he grew up around clubs. I tell you, we tore up that floor.
I don’t even know when we got back to the table. It could have been hours or minutes, but whatever it was, our seats were taken. I skidded to a halt on the polished floor, drag-ging Rashid to a stop, too, like a big old boat anchor. I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.
Lissa sat next to Kaz, looking like someone had lit her up from inside, yakking away at him. And beside Kaz sat Danyel, gazing at me over the rim of his tall glass of soda. Gazing through Rashid as if he wasn’t even there.
I dropped Rashid’s hand.
What were they doing here? Who had told them?
Danyel and Rashid couldn’t be in the same place together. What was I going to do?
I fingered my necklace, tugging it away from my skin. Breathe.
Carly and Brett’s chairs were empty. No help there. Mac looked from me to Rashid to Danyel and raised her eyebrows. No help there, either.
It was all on me.
“Surprise!” As I walked up to Danyel, he stood and hugged me. I detached Kaz from Lissa and hugged him, too. “How did you find us?” I sounded so chirpy and happy, as if my moment of panic had never happened. Go, me.
Kaz tilted his head toward Gillian. “She swore me to secrecy so we could surprise Lissa. It was too good to resist.”
“Having fun?” Danyel smiled at me as if we were the only two people in the room.
“Yeah, this is great.” I glanced over my shoulder at Rashid and stepped to the side to include him in the circle while I ran over what I remembered of the rules of intro-ductions to royalty. Rule number one: the guy with the crown comes first. “Rashid, these are our friends from Santa Barbara, Danyel Johnstone and Kaz Griffin. They came to celebrate Lissa being a finalist for the Hearst medal. Guys, this is Prince Rashid al Amir. He’s doing an exchange term at Spencer.”
“Prince?” Danyel blinked and pulled in his chin as if he didn’t believe me. “For real?”
“Yes, but please do not be uncomfortable.” Rashid shook his hand, even though technically Danyel should have bowed or something. “We are all friends tonight.”
Danyel looked at me, still a bit taken aback, and then his gaze dropped to my throat.
Blink.
Double-take.
Blink again.
“Are those real?” he blurted.
Much as I was tempted to make a joke about cubic zirconias, I couldn’t very well do that with Rashid standing right there. “Of course. Pretty, huh?”
Then, before I could drag Rashid away, he spoke. “They were supposed to be a gift, but I am told they are merely to be a loan.” He smiled at me. “And I must do as I am told.”
“Wait. What? Whoa.” Danyel, waved a hand, as if he were blind and feeling his way. “You mean you gave that to Shani?”
“I tried very hard to do so,” Rashid said solemnly.
“Why?”
The very question the girls had asked me last night. But instead of answering, Rashid looked down his hawkish nose and straightened to military posture. “I was not aware that it was any business of yours.” His tone would have chilled the drinks if they hadn’t already been iced. Farrouk and Bashir, over in the shadows, straightened too. Farrouk slid one hand inside his jacket.
Great. All I had to do was introduce them, and already our fun night was teetering on the edge of ruin. “Come on, Rashid.” I grabbed his hand. “Let’s dance.”
“We have just been dancing.”
“And I want to do some more. Come on.”
“No. Please sit down and tell me what right this person has to speak to you like that.”
I forgot myself and rolled my eyes. “He’s not a person, he’s my friend. We’re all friends here, like you said. Would you relax?”
Could this get any worse?
Yes, it could.
“You want to dance, Shani?” Danyel grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the group. “I’ll dance with you.”
Lord, help me now.
That wasn’t a prayer. Honest. Even I knew better than that. But I was doomed if I went, and doomed if I didn’t. At least this way, I’d get a dance out of the deal.
We made our way to the center of the dance floor, but instead of the funk and soul I wanted, the DJ segued into a slow blues number. I even recognized it. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Riviera Paradise.”
“So.” Danyel took my hand and slipped one arm around my waist. “You the prince’s girl now?”
I owed him an explanation. The time and the place stank, but hey, it had to be done. “I’m not anybody’s girl.”
“When a guy gives a girl this much bling, it usually means something, Shani.”
“Like he said, it’s just a loan. I’m giving it back to him tomorrow.”
“But he wanted it to be for good, right?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But what he wanted and reality are two different things.”
“What I wanted and reality are, too, I guess.”
Urgh. Poetic types. They talk in riddles and expect you to understand because your souls are knit together. I needed plain words. “What does that mean?”
“I thought we had something going.”
“Maybe we do.” I tried a smile, but he didn’t smile back. Stevie’s guitar wailed, content with the moonlight and the romance. Lucky him.
“Does he think the same?”
“We’re just friends, Danyel. We’ve known each other since we were little kids.” I flashed on a memory of Rashid and a dark room and how his kiss had made me feel—all hungry and shaky at the same time. Danyel and I hadn’t done more than hold hands. What was my definition of friends? Was I so shallow that all I wanted was the kind with benefits?
“I thought you and I were friends. I thought we could be more than that.”
“We can.” I’d swear off the prince. Honest, I would. I had to sometime anyway, because by Christmas break, he’d have gone back to where he’d come from. I didn’t want to be left with a bunch of busted possibilities where Danyel was concerned.
“How’m I going to believe that? You came to church with me last weekend, and this weekend you’re freakin’ it with him and wearing his presents.”
His tone rubbed me the wrong way. “It’s not like you put a sign on me saying Mine. And until you do, I can have friends.”
“I can’t afford to put diamonds on it.”
Okay, a little jealousy was kind of sweet. But this sulky possessiveness when there was nothing but a “maybe” between us was getting old.
I pulled away. What a waste of a great slow-dance tune.
But he hung onto my hand and reeled me back in. “I’m sorry. I need you to listen for just one second, Shani.”
“I’
m listening.” Back in his arms, I held myself a little aloof. Just sending a message that I was there under protest, you know?
“I want you to know I’m praying for you. Like, daily. Because you’re my friend. And you mean a lot to me.”
Now there was a contrast. One guy gave me diamonds. One guy prayed for me. Nine girls out of ten would have taken the first guy, hands down. But was I one of those nine girls, or was I the tenth who saw past the glam to the glow?
“I—I’ve been praying, too.”
The corners of his mouth tilted up. “Yeah?”
“You and Lissa should engineer send and receive on your videos. Then you’d have heard me praying last Tuesday. First time.”
“And what did you pray about?”
“Oh, just a general yell for help. I don’t know if it worked or not, but it felt right.”
“If it did, then it was.” I snickered. “What?”
“When I saw you two facing off with each other a minute ago, I prayed. Sort of. But I’m sure the Big Guy had better things to do, because you saw how that worked out.”
“I see that I’m the guy dancing with you. There’s an answer to a prayer for you.”
I had to laugh. “Okay for you. But here I am, stuck in the middle with not one, but two guys who’ve got a beef with me.”
“Looks like you have to make a choice.”
“Looks like.”
He leaned in and pecked me on the cheek. A tingle ran down my neck and all the way to my hand. “May the best man win.”
The song ended and when the DJ started sampling disco from the seventies, he took me back to our table, still smiling.
Rashid, however, was not smiling. He looked as though someone had just crashed his favorite Hummer—and heads were going to roll.
Gulp.
Carly—oh, hey, she was back—bounced up. “I need to find the bathroom. Coming?”
Which, as you know, is code for Danger! Clear the area.
At this rate, my drink was going to be all ice water and no soda—and my dry mouth wasn’t gonna get any of it. Still, I left it sitting there. When Carly’s eyes start talking louder than the music, you’d better listen.
Safely in the ladies’, we commandeered the handicapped stall together. “What’s going on?”
While she did what she had to do, she gave me the sitch. “Rashid is furious that you did a slow one with Danyel. Is there more going on between you two than you told us?”
“Um. Maybe a little more. Maybe he kissed me.”
“Kissed!” Carly’s eyes widened as she finished up and did a hem check. “You never said you kissed the prince.”
“Yeah, well, a girl likes to keep some things to herself.”
“Well, a girl should think twice about it—Gillian would never have invited the guys up here if she’d known you two were serious. We thought you were crushing on Danyel.”
“I was. I mean, I am.”
“And you’re kissing the prince.”
Ouch.Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.
I leaned against the stall door and rubbed a hand over my cheek, careful not to smear my sparkles. “I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m with Rashid, I kiss him. When I’m with Danyel, I want to kiss him. And now that they’ve found out about each other, neither of them wants to kiss me.”
Carly gazed at me, obviously struggling between sympathy and What were you thinking? “Neither of them are the type to let the other be your beta boy,” she said at last.
I nodded. “If I’d known it was going to get this whack, I’d have said no when Rashid asked if I remembered him that first day.” With a deep breath, I changed the subject. “We’d better get back out there. Think Brett would dance with me?”
“No way. I don’t want him getting shot by Farrouk.”
Somehow this wasn’t as funny as we both wanted it to be. We washed our hands and the music whumped us in the face when we opened the bathroom door.
So did Gillian and Lissa, practically running straight into us.
“Whoa, girlfriends!” I stopped Gillian from hitting the wall. “What’s wrong?”
“That arrogant, selfish—” Gillian stopped herself from saying something she’d have to pray about, and tried again. “I’m sorry, Shani. I know he’s your friend. But Rashid just left.”
“Left?” I goggled at her. “What do you mean, left?”
“Just what I said.”
Lissa chimed in. “He took the limo and Farrouk and Bashir and left us all stranded here downtown!”
And you know what? Instead of being angry or feeling abandoned or like I was going to lose him, a big happy wave inside me crested into a laugh. “Are Danyel and Kaz still here?”
“Are you kidding?” Lissa said. “They’d no more leave us down here alone than jump off the Golden Gate.”
“Woohoo!” I pumped a fist at the ceiling. “It is time to par-tay.”
“Are you crazy?” Carly’s hands flew up helplessly. “You just offended Mr. Royalty and we’re all probably going to get house arrest for the rest of term.”
I grabbed her around the waist and waltzed her down the passage. “All the more reason to enjoy ourselves now. We’ve got the cutest guys in the room. We’re dressed so fine we can hardly stand ourselves. And we’re going to dance the heels right off our shoes.”
And that’s exactly what we did.
Until her watched peeped one o’clock and Gillian reminded Lissa that if she planned on a ten o’clock service in the morning, someone ought to find a cab. This wasn’t as much of a killjoy as you’d think, because when everyone else loaded themselves into two of them, who was left over to drive back in Danyel’s Jeep?
I think those girls engineered that on purpose.
Whatever—I wasn’t complaining. Especially when he took my hand and held it all the way back to school. Rashid’s hands were long and straight and fastidiously cared for. Danyel’s were callused from picking guitar and waxing surfboards and holding summer jobs, his fingers sturdy and strong.
Was I making comparisons again? Was I finally going to make a decision? Because the time for that had come and gone. All I can tell you is that during the chaos of unloading three vehicles at the front steps of the school, Danyel stopped me from getting out. He leaned over and made as if to peck me on the cheek again.
Uh-uh. Decision time.
I surprised the you-know-what out of both of us by turning my head at the last second, so instead of my cheek, he got my lips.
My oh my, was it fine.
And then I did what I always do. I stepped back.
But this time I was laughing.
Chapter 15
A New Princess for Yasir?
Spotted at the opening of Due, a new high-tech gallery and restaurant in the Marina area of San Francisco, was HRH Prince Rashid of Yasir with a bevy of beauties in tow. But only one was wearing a custom-made Harry Winston diamond necklace featuring the Star of the Desert, a 30-carat yellow pear-shaped diamond.
And royal-watchers around the world know what that means.
Yes, it seems Prince Rashid, young though he might be, has made his choice of bride. But who is she? Paris Match sent a special reporter to the West Coast to find out.
Sources close to the prince at Spencer Academy, a private high school for the scions of wealthy West Coast families and the children of celebrities, say his exchange term there has been a big success so far—especially when it comes to the social scene. With unlimited access to money and the cachet of his royal status, the prince is a catch by any definition. But who is the mystery girl who has caught the royal eye?
Spencer student and fashion-scene regular Vanessa Talbot, daughter of the Principessa di Firenze and half royal herself, is in a particularly good position to comment. “I’ve known Shani Hanna since we were freshmen here together,” said the brunette beauty, who was wearing a Prada leather skirt and a sheer blouse by Philip Lim 3.1 for the interview. “She’s the nicest girl in the world
—but I’d certainly never peg her as someone who would interest a prince. He has, after all, been hanging out with me and my friends almost exclusively since he arrived and we made him welcome.”
So what is the mysterious Miss Hanna’s appeal? While the school administration was tight-lipped on the matter, a student who did not wish to be named had her own take. “She’s fun and nice and hangs out with the A-list. Why wouldn’t he like her?” When questioned as to whom Spencer students considered the “A-list,” the girl was quick to explain. “People like Lissa Mansfield, who’s Gabe Mansfield’s daughter, you know? His new movie is going to premiere next month and I’ll probably be invited. And Gillian Chang, whose family owns the Formosa-Pacific Bank in New York. And Brett Loyola, whose family owns, well, big chunks of San Francisco. People like that.” The girl paused to think a moment. “Not like Vanessa and Dani Lavigne and those people. Shani is too smart. She sees right through them.”
While tinged with partiality and—may we say it?—a touch of jealousy, the unidentified student’s comments are revealing. Because the next Princess of Yasir will need to be not only beautiful and socially expert, she’ll need to be capable of inspiring love in not just one man, but an entire country. She’ll also need to be connected.
Shani Hanna seems to be fulfilling that role instinctively. It remains to be seen whether the young woman, still only in her senior year of high school, will be the one who can tame the playboy prince and ascend the Lion Throne with him.
On location in San Francisco. —Roberta du Plessis, Paris Match
HALFWAY THROUGH MIDTERMS week, the only thing left to go was my art project. Since I was taking Jewelry Making, this was not as stressful as, well, Econ or Bio, but still. You try soldering a pendant with hands that don’t shake just a little and see how far you get. On the whole, I was pretty happy with my project. I’d made several of the glass beads myself, which looked like little pearls with waves of color inside. The pendant was a composite Carly had done in Photoshop of all five of our faces, filtered as though we were looking through a rainy window. To finish, I had to attach it with a pair of silver chains and tie on the clasp. Once it was graded, I’d wear it with pride.
Who Made You a Princess? Page 13
