The Princess Diaries I

by Meg Cabot

  "We need to talk, Mia," my dad said. This is how his worst lectures always start. Except this time he looked at me kind of funny before he started. "What’s wrong with your hair?"

  I put my hand up to my head. "Why?" I thought my hair looked good, for a change.

  "Nothing is wrong with her hair, Phillipe," my mom said. She usually tries to ward off my dad’s lectures, if she can. "Come and sit down, Mia, and have some breakfast. I even heated up the syrup for the French toast, the way you like it."

  I appreciated this gesture on my mom’s part. I really did. But I was not going to sit down and talk about my future in Genovia. I mean, come on. So I was all, "Uh, I’d love to, really, but I gotta go. I have a test in World Civ today, and I promised Lilly I’d meet her to go over our notes together—"

  "Sit down."

  Boy, my dad can really sound like a starship captain in the Federation when he wants to.

  I sat. My mom shoveled some French toast onto my plate. I poured syrup over it and took a bite, just to be polite. It tasted like cardboard.

  "Mia," my mom said. She was still trying to ward off my dad’s lecture. "I know how upset you must be about all of this. But really, it isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be."

  Oh, right. All of a sudden you tell me I’m a princess, and I’m supposed to be happy about it?

  "I mean," my mom went on, "most girls would probably be delighted to find out their father is a prince!"

  No girls I know. Actually, that’s not true. Lana Weinberger would probably love to be a princess. In fact, she already thinks she is one.

  "Just think of all the lovely things you could have if you went to live in Genovia." My mom’s face totally lit up as she started listing the lovely things I could have if I went to live in Genovia, but her voice sounded strange, as if she were playing a mom on TV or something. "Like a car! You know how impractical it is to have a car here in the city. But in Genovia, when you turn sixteen, I’m sure Dad will buy you a—"

  I pointed out that there are enough problems with pollution in Europe without my contributing to it. Diesel emissions are one of the largest contributors to the destruction of the ozone layer.

  "But you’ve always wanted a horse, haven’t you? Well, in Genovia you could have one. A nice gray one with spots on its back—"

  That hurt.

  "Mom," I said, my eyes all filling up with tears. I completely couldn’t help it. Suddenly, I was bawling all over again. "What are you doing? Do you want me to go live with Dad? Is that it? Are you tired of me or something? Do you want me to go live with Dad so you and Mr. Gianini can . . . can . . . "

  I couldn’t go on because I started crying so hard. But by then my mom was crying, too. She jumped up out of her chair and came around the end of the table and started hugging me, saying, "Oh, no, honey! How could you think something like that?" She stopped sounding like a TV mom. "I just want what’s best for you!"

  "As do I," my dad said, looking annoyed. He had folded his arms across his chest and was leaning back in his chair, watching us in an irritated way.

  "Well, what’s best for me is to stay right here and finish high school," I told him. "And then I’m going to join Greenpeace and help save the whales."

  My dad looked even more irritated at that. "You are not joining Greenpeace," he said.

  "I am, too," I said. It was totally hard to talk, because I was crying and all, but I told him, "I’m going to go to Iceland to save the baby seals, too."

  "You most certainly are not." My dad didn’t just look annoyed. Now he looked mad. "You are going to go to college. Vassar, I think. Maybe Sarah Lawrence."

  That made me cry even more.

  But before I could say anything, my mom held up a hand and was like, "Phillipe, don’t. We aren’t accomplishing anything here. Mia has to get to school, anyway. She’s already late—"

  I started looking around for my backpack and coat real fast. "Yeah," I said. "I gotta renew my MetroCard."

  My dad made this weird French noise he makes sometimes. It’s halfway between a snort and a sigh. It kind of sounds like Pfuit! Then he said, "Lars will drive you."

  I told my dad that this was unnecessary since I meet Lilly every day at Astor Place, where we catch the uptown 6 train together.

  "Lars can pick up your little friend, too."

  I looked at my mom. She was looking at my dad. Lars is my dad’s driver. He goes everywhere my dad goes. For as long as I’ve known my dad—okay, my whole life—he’s always had a driver, usually a big beefy guy who used to work for the president of Israel or somebody like that.

  Now that I think about it, of course I realize these guys aren’t really drivers at all but bodyguards.

  Duh.

  Okay, so the last thing I wanted was for my dad’s bodyguard to drive me to school. How would I ever explain it to Lilly? Oh, don’t mind him, Lilly. He’s just my dad’s chauffeur. Yeah, right. The only person at Albert Einstein High School who gets dropped off by a chauffeur is this totally rich Saudi Arabian girl named Tina Hakim Baba, whose dad owns some big oil company, and everybody makes fun of her because her parents are all worried she’ll get kidnapped between Seventy-fifth and Madison, where our school is, and Seventy-fifth and Fifth, where she lives. She even has a bodyguard who follows her around from class to class and talks on a walkie-talkie to the chauffeur. This seems a little extreme, if you ask me.

  But Dad was totally rigid on the driver thing. It’s like now that I’m an official princess there’s all this concern for my welfare. Yesterday, when I was Mia Thermopolis, it was perfectly okay for me to ride the subway. Today, now that I’m Princess Amelia, forget it.

  Well, whatever. It didn’t seem worth arguing over. I mean, there are way worse things I have to worry about.

  Like which country am I going to be living in in the near future.

  As I was leaving—my dad made Lars come up to the loft to walk me down to the car; it was totally embarrassing—I overheard my dad say to my mom, "All right, Helen. Who’s this Gianini fellow Mia was talking about?"

  Oops.

  ab = a + b

  solve for b

  ab - b = a

  b(a - 1) = a

  More Friday, Algebra

  Lilly could tell right away something was up.

  Oh, she swallowed the whole story I fed her about Lars: "Oh, my dad’s in town, and he’s got this driver, and you know . . . "

  But I couldn’t tell her about the princess thing. I mean, all I kept thinking about was how disgusted Lilly sounded during that part in her oral report when she mentioned how Christian monarchs used to consider themselves appointed agents of divine will and thus were responsible not to the people they governed but to God alone, even though my dad hardly ever even goes to church, except when Grandmère makes him.

  Lilly believed me about Lars, but she was still all over me with the crying thing. She was like, "Why are your eyes so red and squinty? You’ve been crying. Why were you crying? Did something happen? What happened? Did you get another F in something?"

  I just shrugged and tried to look out the passenger window at the uninspiring view of the East Village crackhouses, which we had to drive by to get to the FDR. "It’s nothing," I said. "PMS."

  "It is not PMS. You had your period last week. I remember because you borrowed a pad from me after PE, and then you ate two whole packs of Yodels at lunch." Sometimes I wish Lilly’s memory weren’t so good. "So spill. Did Louie eat another sock?"

  First of all, it was like totally embarrassing to discuss my menstrual cycle in front of my dad’s bodyguard. I mean, Lars is kind of a Baldwin. He was concentrating really hard on driving, though, and I don’t know if he could hear us from the front seat, but it was embarrassing, just the same.

  "It’s nothing," I whispered. "Just my dad. You know."

  "Oh," Lilly said in her normal voice. Have I mentioned that Lilly’s normal voice is really loud? "You mean the infertility thing? Is he still bummed out about that? Gawd
, does he ever need to self-actualize."

  Lilly then went on to describe something she called the Jungian tree of self-actualization. She says my dad is way on the bottom branches, and he won’t be able to reach the top of the thing until he accepts himself as he is and stops obsessing over his inability to sire more offspring.

  I guess that’s part of my problem. I’m way at the bottom of the self-actualization tree. Like, underneath the roots of it, practically.

  But now that I’m sitting here in Algebra, things don’t seem so bad, really. I mean, I thought about it all through Homeroom, and I finally realized something:

  They can’t make me be princess.

  They really can’t. I mean, this is America, for crying out loud. Here, you can be anything you want to be. At least that’s what Mrs. Holland was always telling us last year, when we studied U.S. History. So, if I can be whatever I want to be, I can not be a princess. Nobody can make me be a princess, not even my dad, if I don’t want to be one.

  Right?

  So when I get home tonight, I’ll just tell my dad thanks, but no thanks. I’ll just be plain old Mia for now.

  Geez. Mr. Gianini just called on me, and I totally had no idea what he was talking about, because of course I was writing in this book instead of paying attention. My face feels like it’s on fire. Lana is laughing her head off, of course. She is such a wanker.

  What does he keep picking on me for, anyway? He should know by now that I don’t know the quadratic formula from a hole in the ground. He’s only picking on me because of my mom. He wants to make it look as if he’s treating me the same as everybody else in the class.

  Well, I’m not the same as everybody else in the class.

  What do I need to know Algebra for, anyway? They don’t use Algebra in Greenpeace.

  And you can bet you don’t need it if you’re a princess. So however things turn out, I’m covered.

  Cool.

  solve x = a + aby for y

  x - a = aby

  Really Late on Friday,

  Lilly Moscovitz’s Bedroom

  Okay, so I blew off Mr. Gianini’s help session after school. I know I shouldn’t have. Believe me, Lilly let me know I shouldn’t have. I know he has these help sessions just for people like me, who are flunking. I know he does it in his own spare time and doesn’t even get paid overtime for it or anything. But if I won’t ever need Algebra in any foreseeable future career, why do I need to go?

  I asked Lilly if it would be okay if I spent the night at her house tonight and she said only if I promised to stop acting like such a head case.

  I promised, even though I don’t think I’m acting like a head case.

  But when I called my mom from the pay phone in the lobby after school to ask her if it was okay if I stayed overnight at the Moscovitzes, she was all, "Um, actually, Mia, your father was really hoping that when you got home tonight we could have another talk."

  Oh, great.

  I told my mom that although there was nothing I wanted to do more than have another talk, I was very concerned about Lilly, whose stalker was recently released from Bellevue again. Ever since Lilly started her cable access TV show, this guy named Norman has been calling in, asking her to take off her shoes. According to the Drs. Moscovitz, Norman is a fetishist. His fixation is feet—in particular, Lilly’s feet. He sends stuff to her care of the show, CDs and stuffed animals and things like that, and writes that there’ll be more where that came from if Lilly would just take off her shoes on air. So what Lilly does is, she takes off her shoes, all right, but then she throws a blanket over her legs and kicks her feet around under it and goes, "Look, Norman, you freak! I took my shoes off! Thanks for the CDs, sucker!"

  This angered Norman so much that he started wandering around the Village looking for Lilly. Everyone knows Lilly lives in the Village, since we filmed a very popular episode where Lilly borrowed the pricing gun from Grand Union and stood on the corner of Bleecker and La Guardia and told all the European tourists wandering around NoHo that if they wore a Grand Union price sticker on their foreheads they could get a free latte from Dean & DeLuca (a surprising amount of them believed her).

  Anyway, one day a few weeks ago Norman the foot fetishist found us in the park and started chasing us around, waving twenty dollar bills and trying to get us to take off our shoes. This was very entertaining, and hardly scary at all, especially because we just ran right up to the command post on Washington Square South and Thompson Street, where the Sixth Precinct has been parking this enormous trailer so they can secretly spy on the drug dealers. We told the police that this weird guy was trying to assault us, and you should have seen it: About twenty undercover guys (even a guy I thought was an old homeless man asleep on a bench) jumped on Norman and dragged him, screaming, off to the mental ward!

  I always have such a good time with Lilly.

  Anyway, Lilly’s parents told her Norman just got out of Bellevue and that if she sees him she’s not to torment him anymore, because he’s just a poor obsessive-compulsive with possible schizophrenic tendencies.

  Lilly’s devoting tomorrow’s show to her feet. She’s going to model every single pair of shoes she owns, but not once show her bare feet. She hopes that this will drive Norman over the edge and he’ll do something weirder than ever, like get a gun and shoot at us.

  I’m not scared, though. Norman has kind of thick glasses, and I bet he couldn’t actually hit anything, even with a machine gun, which even a lunatic like Norman is allowed to buy in this country thanks to our totally unrestrictive gun laws, which Michael Moscovitz says in his webzine will ultimately result in the demise of democracy as we know it.

  My mom was totally not buying this, though. She was all, "Mia, I appreciate the fact that you want to help your friend through this difficult period with her stalker, but I really think you have more pressing responsibilities here at home."

  And I was all, "What responsibilities?" thinking she was talking about the litter box, which I had totally cleaned two days ago.

  And she was like, "Responsibility toward your father and me."

  I just about lost it right there. Responsibilities? Responsibilities? She’s telling me about responsibilities? When is the last time it ever occurred to her to drop off the laundry, let alone pick it up again? When is the last time she remembered to buy Q-Tips or toilet paper or milk?

  And did she ever happen to think to mention, in all of my fourteen years, that I might possibly end up being the princess of Genovia someday???

  She thinks she needs to tell me about my responsibilities?

  HA!!!!!!

  I nearly hung up on her. But Lilly was sort of standing nearby, practicing her house manager duties by switching on and off the lights in the school lobby. Since I had promised not to act like a head case, and hanging up on my mother would definitely fall into the head case category, I said in this really patient voice, "Don’t worry, Mom, I won’t forget to stop at Genovese on my way home tomorrow and pick up new vacuum cleaner bags."

  And then I hung up.

  HOMEWORK

  Algebra: problems 1–12, pg. 119

  English: proposal

  World Civ: questions at end of Chapter 4

  G & T: none

  French: use avoir in neg. sentence, rd. lessons one to three, pas de plus

  Biology: none

  Saturday, October 4,

  Early, Still Lilly’s Place

  Why do I always have such a good time when I spend the night at Lilly’s? I mean, it’s not like they’ve got stuff that I don’t have. In fact, my mom and I have better stuff. The Moscovitzes only get a couple of movie channels, and because I took advantage of the last Time Warner Cable bonus offer, we have all of them, Cinemax and HBO and Showtime, for the low, low rate of $19.99 per month.

  Plus we have way better people to spy on through our windows, like Ronnie, who used to be a Ronald but is now called Ronette, and who has a lot of big fancy parties; and that skinny German couple who wea
r black all the time, even in summer, and never pull down their blinds. On Fifth Avenue, where the Moscovitzes live, there’s nobody good to look at: Just other rich psychoanalysts and their children. Let me tell you, you don’t see anything good through their windows.

  But it’s like every time I spend the night here, even if all Lilly and I do is hang out in the kitchen eating macaroons left over from Rosh Hashanah, I have such a great time. Maybe that’s because Maya, the Moscovitzes’ Dominican maid, never forgets to buy orange juice, and she always remembers that I don’t like the pulpy kind, and sometimes, if she knows I’m staying over, she’ll pick up a vegetable lasagna from Balducci’s, instead of a meat one, especially for me, like she did last night.

  Or maybe it’s because I never find moldy old containers of anything in the Moscovitzes’ refrigerator. Maya throws away anything that’s even one day past its expiration date. Even sour cream that still has the protective plastic around the lid. Even cans of Tab.

  And the Drs. Moscovitz never forget to pay the electricity bill. Con Ed has never once shut down their power in the middle of a Star Trek movie marathon. And Lilly’s mom, she always talks about normal stuff, like what a great deal she got on Calvin Klein panty hose at Bergdorf’s.

  Not that I don’t love my mom or anything. I totally do. I just wish she could be more of a mom and less of an artist.

  And I wish my dad could be more like Lilly’s dad, who always wants to make me an omelet because he thinks I’m too skinny, and who walks around in his old college sweatpants when he doesn’t have to go to his office to analyze anybody.

  Dr. Moscovitz would never wear a suit at seven in the morning.

  Not that I don’t love my dad. I do, I guess. I just don’t understand how he could let something like this happen. He’s usually so organized. How could he have let himself become a prince?

  I just don’t understand it.

  The best thing, I guess, about going to Lilly’s is that while I’m there I don’t even have to think about things like how I’m flunking Algebra or how I’m the heir to the throne of a small European principality. I can just relax and enjoy some real homemade Poppin Fresh Cinnamon Buns and watch Pavlov, Michael’s sheltie, try to herd Maya back into the kitchen every time she tries to comes out.