Who Made You a Princess?

by Shelley Adina

  “’Bye, guys.” I felt as pathetic as I sounded as all the people I really wanted around me trooped out of the room, glancing at my father as they went. When I couldn’t hear their voices anymore, I sighed.

  Now I really felt sick.

  The doctor typed something on the wall-mounted keyboard. “Your vitals are good, Shani, and we’ll do a couple of checks on your responses to make sure, but I think I can release you tonight.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just promise me you’ll lie low for a couple of days. No late-night partying, no alcohol, no sports until after the weekend.”

  “No problem.” What, did the guy think I’d been drinking when I’d run out into the intersection? With another sigh, I let it go.

  “I’ll give you some time to visit with your dad while I do the paperwork, and then he can take you back to school.”

  Oh, joy. Could we skip Part A and go straight to Part B?

  Guess not.

  Dad reached over and plucked the flower out of my hair. He looked around for somewhere to put it, and finally settled for tucking it in at the bottom of the bouquet, where it hung suspended, just out of reach of the water.

  “What did you do that for? I liked it.”

  “It’s not respectful of Rashid’s gift.”

  “I wore his diamonds. Why not his flowers?”

  He looked at me as though he wanted to call the doctor back and tell him to rethink my release. “Is this a side-effect of painkillers, Shani? All this crankiness?”

  “It’s a side-effect of you, Dad. You come in here, chase my friends away, take away my flower, and then criticize me.”

  He gave me a long look, but there was no anger in it. I was almost sorry. If I couldn’t get love out of him, then at least we could pick a fight. “I’m going to cut you some slack, because you’ve been through an ordeal. But before they release you and we go back to Spencer, we need to talk.”

  The sleep strategy probably wouldn’t work, and he sat between me and the door. “Dad, you want one thing. I want something completely different. End of talk.”

  “I think if you knew the circumstances, you might reconsider your position.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He gazed at me from the chair, frowning. “When did you get to be so…obdurate?”

  “Oh…somewhere between being shipped off to boarding school and sold to the highest bidder, I guess.”

  “Your mother and I love you, Shani. We want the very best for you, which is why we’ve spent so much time making sure you had the best education money could buy, that you connected with people who could help you in your adult life, that you had mentors and caretakers with international interest.”

  “You make me sound like those pandas in China.”

  He ignored me. “This arrangement between our family and the Sheikh’s is the best thing that could happen to any young woman.”

  “You should go find one who appreciates that, then.”

  “I believe you’ll come to appreciate it once you know the truth. You said something yesterday, when we saw you at Spencer, about running PetroNova some day.”

  I nodded. Though at this point, no matter how much education I had, being hired by my father as anything more than a mailroom clerk seemed pretty remote.

  “Well, the truth is, without you there is no PetroNova.”

  Or maybe not. “What do you mean? Can I work there after I graduate from college? Because, Dad, I totally plan to apply to Harvard Business School and Stanford. I just have to decide if an M.B.A. or a doctorate in organizational studies would be a better—”

  He shook his head. “No, no. That’s not what I meant.” He fell silent a moment, as if he were organizing his arguments. Then he looked up. “Nearly twenty years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I spent a winter in Yasir with my grandmother and her husband.”

  Okay, I didn’t get the connection, but I’d play along. “Rashid’s grand-uncle or whatever.”

  “Right. I was like you are now, burning with ambition. I had big plans to do graduate work in petroleum technology, thinking I’d focus on abandoned wells and recovery.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I’d met your mother in my junior year, and we had plans to marry the summer after graduation. I was twenty grand in debt from student loans, and looking at more. I’d always known our families were tight, but I didn’t know how tight until the Sheikh, who was a young man then, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “What was that?”

  “In return for a continuing alliance between our families, as had been going on for generations, he would finance a forty percent stake in a petroleum exploration company. I’d run it, he’d act as a partner until it was off the ground, and we’d begin by drilling in some of the more remote parts of Yasir.”

  Fragments of conversations I’d heard when I was a kid flickered in the back of my memory.

  “That was that big well that came in in the nineties, wasn’t it? The one that saved the first President Bush’s butt during whatever war that was?”

  My father nodded. “Sales of petroleum from Yasir made it, um, economically feasible for the U.S. to bring certain parts of its strategy in the Middle East to a swift close.”

  “But, Dad, I still don’t get what this has to do with Rashid and me.”

  “I told you, honey. I promised an alliance. Our family bloodline includes a prophet that validates the royal family’s claim to the throne. The continuation of the line means the House of al-Aarez stays, in their minds, blessed. And that means you and Rashid.”

  “But how can you make that promise when I wasn’t even born? And I’ve gone my whole life not knowing anything about it. Did Rashid know?”

  “He has always known he would marry for the good of his family. And you have to admit, prophets aside, the oil in Yasir has been very, very good for the house of al-Aaraz.”

  “And for the house of Hanna.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my tone. “But this doesn’t change anything, Dad. I’m still not going to marry him. I’m going to graduate from Spencer, go to college, and have a career like a normal person.”

  “Then all of us will have to face the consequences. Because normal isn’t for people like us.”

  “What consequences? You say to the Sheikh, ‘Hey, she didn’t go for it. Let’s find another cousin for Rashid.’”

  “There aren’t any cousins who have been brought up to this job the way you have. Everything you are, all the experiences you’ve had, have been tailored to make you the perfect Princess of Yasir.”

  Of all the things he’d said to me, that flat-out scared me the most. Cold crept over my skin. “I’m not any princess, or anybody’s version of what a princess should be. I’m me. Shani. I’m my own self and I’m going to stay that way.”

  “If you do, you’ll put us all at risk.”

  “For what? Is Yasir going to declare war on the U.S. because of me?”

  “Of course not. But I’ll tell you what the Sheikh will do. He’ll pull his forty percent stake. And PetroNova will fail. Your mother and I will lose the house in Lake Forest. We’ll lose the corporate jet and none of us will be able to travel again, including the cruise down the Loire and the shopping trip in Paris we promised you for graduation. And it won’t stop there.” He leaned in toward me. “You’ll be pulled out of this school and sent to public school in Chicago for the rest of your senior year. You’d better forget about Harvard Business School or any other college, because there won’t be any money to send you. And it goes without saying that all your credit cards will be cancelled. You’ll be lucky to keep whatever’s in your savings account. Because, honey, there’s no trust fund.”

  I sat there in my cheap cotton hospital gown and stared at him. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I have never been more serious about anything,” my father said. “If you don’t accept that necklace he gave you and announce your engagement to Rashid, our life as we know it will be over, and
our family will be completely ruined.”

  Chapter 18

  I HAD STREP in my freshman year, so I knew that Ms. Vallejo, one of the biology teachers, was also Dr. Vallejo, in-house doc. She must have been in her thirties, but sporting jeans and a plain white T-shirt under her blue school blazer, she looked about twenty-five.

  “You have two choices,” she said, sitting on the edge of the exam table while I kicked back in one of the chairs. “You can stay in your dorm room for the weekend and flog your roomies into giving you the peace and quiet you need to recover, or you can stay here in the medical suite, which is off limits to everyone except me, Ms. Curzon, and family members.”

  Family members? Well, that was a no-brainer.

  The Media Communications students jacked my laptop into the comm system and I took my Friday morning core and Life Sciences classes (except Phys.Ed.) in our dorm room by video link. I’m not a geek like Gillian, but I do love the perks of technology.

  Carly brought my lunch on a tray, along with a plate for herself. Barbecued ribs and poached kale, which I could sort of fool myself into thinking were collard greens. And, of all things, sweet potato pie. Bless Dining Services. If anyone was jonesing for comfort food right now, it was me.

  “So Brett wants to know if we want to go up to Napa this weekend, now that midterms are over.” Carly licked sauce off her fingers. “They’re harvesting the grapes. His parents are going up and there’ll be a big cookout and free concerts in town.”

  “Oh, man. That sounds great.”

  She pointed a rib at me. “No dancing for you. You’re to sit on the veranda in the shade and have people bring you cold drinks.”

  “You know I can’t go. The doc will have a fit.”

  “Would you rather sit in this room by yourself all weekend? At least in Napa you’ll have us, and Brett’s mom can’t wait to get her hands on you. She says don’t worry about a thing.”

  I gazed at her, puzzled. “Why would she care? And how does she even know?”

  “I hope you don’t mind. I told the girls the deal with you and Rashid, and Brett, too. When he told his mom, she freaked. I think she’s behind this whole thing.”

  “A mom plot to get me away from my parents and Rashid?” Wow. I didn’t care who Carly told. But I could hardly believe that a woman I hardly knew would care two cents about what happened to me.

  “Where are they, anyway?” Carly asked.

  “My parents? At the Four Seasons. They’re not leaving town until they get the answer they want.”

  Carly’s eyes widened and she looked a little scared. I filled her in on what my father had unloaded on me last night. Halfway through, her mouth dropped open in shock, and stayed that way until I was done.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe they’d treat you like that. You’re their daughter, not a stock portfolio.”

  I shrugged, and then regretted it. “Ow. Not much I won’t believe anymore. Back to the fun part. I don’t think I’ll make it to Napa without drugs.”

  “You have plenty of those.” She glanced at the miniature pharmacy on the desk next to me. “So let me get this straight. Your folks aren’t leaving until you say yes to Rashid, even though you’re only seventeen. If you don’t, you get disinherited, and they lose their company?”

  Disinherited. Trust her to sound so very Austenese. “Pretty much.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t care if we have to clunk you on the head with Gillian’s physics book to knock you out. You’re coming to Napa and getting away from those people.”

  I tried to laugh, but it came out more of a cautious sigh. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  To: Dijon@mac.com

  From:CAragon@spenceracad.edu

  Date:October 23, 2009

  Re:Napa

  Hi, Danyel. I know this is late notice, so I hope you get this in time. Shani was in a car accident on Wednesday. She’s OK, but the girls and I want to take her away from here for some R&R. She’s having major parent issues and needs to be with us for a couple of days.

  If you can come, call me at 408-555-1002. I’m attaching a map of how to get to Brett’s parents’ vineyard in Napa. That’s where we’ll be. I hope we’ll see you.

  Our girl needs you.

  Carly

  * * *

  It took me half an hour of—as Mac said—“creaking ’round the room like a crone” to get a bag packed, but at least Mac carried it downstairs for me. Two hours later we were all in Napa, breathing in the sweet smell of freedom and ripening grapes as we climbed out of the limo.

  “I’ve been a lot of places,” I said, walking to the terrace rail and looking out at the hillside and its terraces of vines, “but this is one of the most beautiful, ever.”

  “Grazie.” I turned to see Mrs. Loyola, whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since we stayed at their house last spring. “I hope it helps us help you recover, Shani.”

  I stiffened in both surprise and pain as she gave me a soft, gentle hug. Then she held me away from her. “You poor child,” she said. “Forgive me for prying the whole story out of Carly. I can’t make up for this in any way, but maybe we can get you well enough to face it, at least.”

  Whoa. How come Brett got such a great mother, and I got the scheming harpy?

  At the vineyard, the Loyolas ate on Italian time, which meant anytime after eight. So while the sun slid languidly over the shoulders of the hills, Brett and Mac took off to show Carly how to ride a dirt bike. That girl is courage on feet. I can do a lot of stuff, but I like solid metal around me when I’m zooming around in top gear.

  I lay on a nice squashy chaise longue on the veranda, overlooking the hillside heavy with grapes, and listening to birds and the sound of a fountain somewhere out of sight.

  Bliss.

  The only thing that would make it perfect would be—

  “Something to drink?” Mrs. Loyola put down a tray with a pitcher of iced tea and a couple of glasses on the glass table next to me.

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  “No, only selfish. I wanted some, myself. I’m only sharing it with you so I won’t look bad.”

  This time I could laugh without pain, or maybe it was all the pills I’d taken so I could survive the ride up here. Didn’t matter. It felt good to laugh.

  “Where did Lissa and Gillian go?”

  “They dragged Jeremy and that other boy—Jake?”

  “Tate.”

  “Right. They went off into the grapes to have a look. Gillian’s never seen live grapes in the wild, as it were. I think she wanted to capture a bunch and bring them back to eat. Though that’ll probably be a surprise. Cabernet grapes aren’t exactly Thompson seed-less.”

  “Do we get to stomp them?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No stomping here. It is harvest, though. The vineyard workers go down the rows with the tractor”—she pointed into the distance—“and load the grapes into half-ton plastic bins. Those go on a flatbed truck, which takes them to the winery.”

  “Aren’t you a winery?”

  “Afraid not. We’re what they call a boutique vineyard, only fifteen acres. We supply one of the bigger ones. It’s a hobby for my husband and an excuse to get out of the city for me.”

  “I hear you,” I said, a little too fervently.

  Her eyes were so kind. “I hope I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have when you arrived. The situation upsets me. I apologize if I let my feelings go and embarrassed you.”

  “Don’t.” I wished I had the guts to touch her hand. “The situation upsets me, too. Which is way understating it.”

  “I wish I could do something. All I can do is pray, though, so I’ve been doing that.”

  I blinked. “Pray?”

  “Yes. You’ve heard of it?”

  With a roll of the eyes, I said, “I’m surrounded by praying friends. I’d have to be deaf not to hear of it.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” she sa
id softly.

  “Lucky? My parents are selling me to a prince for a forty percent stake!”

  “Not about that. To have friends who care so deeply. Who go to the Lord for you. That’s a huge gift.”

  “I know it.” I did. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Maybe, with the situation the way it was, I should start looking into that.

  “I can’t tell you how thankful I am for your friend Carly,” she went on. “Since he started going with her, Brett is a different person. I don’t get calls in the middle of the night from our restaurant managers, telling me he’s wandering on the waterfront with his friends, stoned out of his mind. I don’t hear from the police anymore. He studies, he rows…he actually made the dean’s list for the first time, did you know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Carly is so fearless about being who she is in her faith that it shook him up. It made him see me differently. He actually talks to me.”

  To hear her tell it, this was the equivalent of getting a two-million-dollar necklace. But she probably already had one of those. So it was even better.

  “So that’s why I browbeat you all into coming this weekend. To thank you for being his friends.”

  Or for being Carly’s friends. But…wow. What was going on with Brett, anyway? He couldn’t be putting it on, because Carly would see right through that. And if she didn’t, Lissa would. Could it be possible that Gillian was right? That God worked through people and changed them, and then started changing everything around them?

  Was I sitting here listening to this sweetheart of a lady, who had tears in her eyes, she was so happy, because one day in junior year, Carly had decided that she needed God?

  Did it really happen like that? Could it happen to me?

  Because it was becoming plain that I wasn’t doing a very good job of managing my own self. Even my ability to trust myself was kind of shaky. Here I was, looking at the powers my girlfriends seemed to have because of this God thing—and I had nothing.