Princess in Waiting

by Meg Cabot

  “Returning calls probably doesn’t count as chasing,” I said. “That would probably be okay.”

  My mom, who was sitting on the end of my bed, just shook her head.

  “Really, Mia,” she said. “You know I don’t like to contradict your grandmother”—this was the biggest lie I’d heard since René told me I waltzed divinely, but I let it slide, on account of Mom’s condition—“but I really don’t think you should be playing mind games with boys. Particularly a boy you care about. Particularly a boy like Michael.”

  “Mom, if I want to spend the rest of my life with him, I have to play games with Michael,” I explained to her, patiently. “I certainly can’t tell him the truth. If he were ever to learn the depths of my passion for him, he’d run like a startled fawn.”

  My mom looked stunned. “A what?”

  “A startled fawn,” I explained. “See, Tina told her boyfriend Dave Farouq El-Abar how she really feels about him, and he pulled a total David Caruso on her.”

  My mom blinked. “A who?”

  “David Caruso,” I said. I felt sorry for my mom. Clearly she had only managed to snag Mr. Gianini by the skin of her teeth. I couldn’t believe she didn’t know this stuff. “You know, he disappeared for a really long time. Dave only resurfaced when Tina managed to scrounge Wrestlemania tickets for the Garden. And ever since, Tina says things have been really awkward.” Done unpacking, I shooed Fat Louie out of the suitcase, closed it, and put it on the floor. Then I sat next to my mom on the bed. “Mom,” I said. “I do not want that to happen to me and Michael. I love Michael more than anything else in the entire world, except for you and Fat Louie.”

  I just said the you part to be polite. I think I love Michael more than I love my mom. It sounds terrible to say, but I can’t help it, it is just how I feel.

  But I will never love anyone or anything as much as I love Fat Louie.

  “So don’t you see?” I said to her. “What Michael and I have, I don’t want to mess it up. He’s my Romeo in black jeans.” Even though of course I have never seen Michael in black jeans. But I am sure he has some. It is just that we have a dress code at our school, so usually when I see him he is in gray flannel pants, as that is part of our uniform. “And the fact of the matter is, Michael could do way better than me, anyway. So I have to be especially careful.”

  My mom blinked at me sort of confusedly. “Better than you? What on earth are you talking about, Mia?”

  “Well, you know,” I said. “I mean, Mom, I am not exactly a catch. I’m not really pretty, or anything, and I think we both know how hard I had to work just to pass my first semester of freshman Algebra. And it isn’t as if I am really good at anything.”

  “Mia!” My mom looked totally shocked. “What are you talking about? You’re good at lots of things! Why, you know everything there is to know about the environment and Iceland and what’s playing on the Lifetime Channel….”

  I tried to smile encouragingly at her, like I actually thought these things were talents. I didn’t want to make my mom feel bad for not having passed any of her artistic gifts on to me. That is totally not her fault, just some faulty DNA strand somewhere.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But, see, Mom, those aren’t actually talents. Michael is gorgeous and smart and he can play a bunch of instruments and write songs and is good at just about everything, and it’s really only a matter of time until he gets snatched up by some totally pretty girl who can surf, or whatever—”

  “I don’t know why,” my mom said, “you think that just because you had to work a little harder at Algebra than other people in your class that you are not good at anything, or that Michael is going to take up with a girl who can surf. But I do think that if you haven’t seen a boy in a month, and he leaves a message for you, the decent thing to do is to call him back. If you don’t, I think you can pretty much guarantee he is going to run. And not like a startled fawn, either.”

  I blinked at my mom. She had a point. I saw then that Grandmère’s scheme—you know, of always keeping the man you love guessing as to whether or not you love him back—had some pitfalls. Such as, he could just decide you don’t like him, and take off, and maybe fall in love with some other girl of whose affection he could be assured, such as Judith Gershner, president of the Computer Club and all-around prodigy, even though supposedly she is dating a boy from Trinity, but you never know, that could be a ruse to lull me into a false sense of security about Michael and let my guard down, thinking he is safe from Judith’s fruit-fly–cloning clutches….

  “Mia,” my mom said, looking at me all concerned. “Are you all right?”

  I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. How, I wondered, could Tina and I have overlooked this very serious flaw in our plan? Even now, Michael could be on the phone with Judith or some other equally intellectual girl, talking about quasars or photons or whatever it is smart people talk about. Worse, he could be on the phone with Kate Bosworth, talking about wave surface.

  “Mom,” I said, standing up. “You have to go. I have to call him.”

  I was glad the panic that was clutching my throat wasn’t audible in my voice.

  “Oh, Mia,” my mom said, looking pleased. “I really think you should. Charlotte Brontë is, of course, a brilliant author, but you’ve got to remember, she wrote Jane Eyre back in the 1840s, and things were a little different then—”

  “Mom,” I said. Lilly and Michael’s parents, the Drs. Moscovitz, have this totally hardfast rule about calling after eleven on schoolnights. It is verboten. And it was practically eleven. And my mom was still standing there, keeping me from having the privacy I would need if I were going to make this all-important call.

  “Oh,” she said, smiling. Even though she is pregnant, my mom still looks like a total babe, with all this long black hair that curls just right. Clearly I inherited my dad’s hair, which I’ve actually never seen, since he’s always been bald since I’ve known him.

  DNA is so unfair.

  Anyway, FINALLY she left—pregnant women move so slowly, I swear you would think evolution would have made them quicker so they could get away from predators or whatever, but I guess not—and I lunged for the phone, my heart pounding because at last, AT LAST, I was going to get to talk to Michael, and my mom had even said that it was all right, that my calling him wouldn’t count as chasing since he’d called me first….

  And just as I was about to pick up the receiver, the phone rang. My heart actually did this flippy thing inside my chest, like it does every time I see Michael. It was Michael calling, I just knew it. I picked up after the second ring—even though I didn’t want him dumping me for some more attentive girl, I didn’t want him to think I was sitting by the phone waiting for him to call, either—and said, in my most sophisticated tone, “Hullo?”

  Grandmère’s cigarette-ravaged voice filled my ear. “Amelia?” she rasped. “Why do you sound like that? Are you coming down with something?”

  “Grandmère.” I couldn’t believe it. It was ten fifty-nine! I had exactly one minute left to call Michael without running the risk of the wrath of his parents. “I can’t talk now. I have to make another call.”

  “Pfuit!” Grandmère made her noise of disapproval. “And who would you be calling at this hour, as if I didn’t know?”

  “Grandmère.” Ten fifty-nine and a half. “It’s okay. He called me first. I am returning his call. It is the polite thing to do.”

  “It’s too late for you to be calling that boy ,” Grandmère said.

  Eleven o’clock. I had missed my opportunity. Thanks to Grandmère.

  “You’ll see him at school tomorrow, anyway,” she went on. “Now, let me speak to your mother.”

  “My mother?” I was shocked by this. Grandmère never talks to my mom, if she can help it. They haven’t gotten along since my mom refused to marry my dad after she got pregnant with me, on account of her not wanting her child to be subjected to the vicissitudes of a progenitive aristocracy.

  “Ye
s, your mother,” Grandmère said. “Surely you’ve heard of her.”

  So I went out and passed the phone to my mom who was sitting out in the living room with Mr. Gianini, watching The Anna Nicole Show . I didn’t tell her who was on the phone, because if I had, my mom would have told me to tell Grandmère that she was in the shower, and then I would have had to talk to her some more.

  “Hello?” my mom said, all brightly, thinking it was one of her friends calling to comment on the hijinks of Howard K. Stern and Bobby Trendy. I slunk out as fast as I could. There were several heavy objects lying around the couch that my mom could have hurled in my direction if I’d stayed within missile range.

  Back in my room, I thought sadly about Michael. What was I going to say to him tomorrow, when Lars and I pulled up in the limo to pick him and Lilly up before school? That I’d gotten in too late to call? What if he noticed my nostrils flaring as I spoke? I don’t know if he’s figured out that they do that when I lie, but I think I’d sort of mentioned it to Lilly, since I have a complete inability to keep my mouth shut about stuff I really should just keep to myself, and supposing she told him?

  Then, as I sat there dejectedly on my bed, pretty sleepy because in Genovia it was five in the morning and I was totally jet-lagged, I had a brilliant idea. I could see if Michael was logged on, and instant message him! I could do it even though my mom was on the phone with Grandmère, because we have DSL now!

  So I scrambled over to my computer and did just that. And he was online!

  Michael , I wrote. Hi, it’s me! I’m home! I wanted to call you, but it’s after eleven, and I didn’t want your mom and dad to get mad.

  Michael has changed his screen name since the demise of Crackhead . He’s no longer CracKing. He’s LinuxRulz, in protest of the stranglehold Microsoft has on the software industry.

  LINUX RULZ: Welcome home! It’s good to hear from you. I was worried you were dead or something.

  So he had noticed I’d stopped calling! Which meant the plan that Tina and I had come up with was working perfectly. At least so far.

  FT LOUIE: No, not dead. Just super busy. You know, fate of the aristocracy resting on my shoulders and all of that. So should

  Lars and I pick you and Lilly up for school tomorrow?

  LINUX RULZ: That’d be good. What are you doing Friday?

  What am I doing Friday? Was he asking me OUT? Were Michael and I actually going to have a date? At last????

  I tried to type casually so he wouldn’t know that I was so excited, I had already freaked Fat Louie out by jumping up and down in my computer chair and almost rolling over his tail.

  FT LOUIE: Nothing, so far as I know. Why?

  LINUX RULZ: Want to go to dinner at the Screening Room? They’re showing the first Star Wars.

  OH, MY GOD!!!!!!!! HE WAS ASKING ME OUT!!!!!!!!! Dinner and a movie. At the same time, because at the Screening Room you sit at a table and eat dinner while the movie is going. And Star Wars is only my favorite movie of all time, afterDirty Dancing . Could there BE a girl luckier than me? No, I don’t think so. Bite me, Britney.

  My fingers were trembling as I typed

  FT LOUIE: I think that would be OK. I’ll have to check with my mom. Can I let you know tomorrow?

  LINUX RULZ: OK. So see you tomorrow? Around 8:15?

  FT LOUIE: Tomorrow, 8:15.

  I wanted to add something like I missed you or I love you, but I don’t know, it just felt too weird, and I couldn’t do it. I mean, it’s embarrassing, telling the person you love that you love them. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Also, it didn’t seem like something Jane Eyre would do. Unless, you know, she had just discovered the man she loved had gone blind in a heroic attempt to rescue his crazy firebug wife from an inferno she’d set herself.

  Asking me out to dinner and a movie didn’t really seem the same, somehow.

  Then Michael wrote

  LINUX RULZ : Kid, I’ve been from one side of this galaxy to the other—

  which is one of my favorite lines from the first Star Wars . So then I wrote

  FT LOUIE: I happen to like nice men.

  —jumping ahead to The Empire Strikes Back , to which Michael replied

  LINUX RULZ: I’m nice.

  Which is better than saying I love you, because right after Han Solo says that, he totally kisses Princess Leia. OH, MY GOD!!! It really is like Michael is Han Solo and I’m Princess Leia, because Michael is good at fixing stuff like hyper drives, and, well, I’m a princess, and I’m very socially conscious like Leia, and everything.

  Plus Michael’s dog, Pavlov, sort of looks like Chewbacca. If Chewbacca were a sheltie.

  I could not imagine a more perfect date if I tried. Mom will let me go, too, because the Screening Room isn’t that far away, and it’s Michael , after all. Even Mr. Gianini likes Michael, and he doesn’t like many of the boys who go to Albert Einstein—he says they are mostly all walking bundles of testosterone.

  I wonder if Princess Leia ever read Jane Eyre . But maybe Jane Eyre doesn’t exist in her galaxy.

  I will never get to sleep now, I am too worked up.I am going to see him in eight hours and fifteen minutes .

  And on Friday, I am going to be sitting next to him in a darkened room. All alone. With no one else around. Except all the waitresses and the other people at the movie.

  The Force isso with me.

  Tuesday, January 20,

  first day of school after winter break, Homeroom

  I barely made it out of bed this morning. In fact, the only reason I was able to drag myself out from beneath the covers—and Fat Louie, who laid on my chest purring like a weedwhacker all night long—was the prospect of seeing Michael for the first time in thirty-two days.

  It is completely cruel to force a person of my tender years, when I should be getting at least nine hours of sleep a night, to travel back and forth between two such drastically different time zones, with not even a single day of rest in between. I am still completely jet-lagged, and I am sure it is going to stunt not only my physical growth, (not in the height department because I am tall enough, thank you, but in the mammary-gland division, glands being very sensitive to things like disrupted sleep cycles) but my intellectual growth as well.

  And now that I am entering the second semester of my freshman year, my grades are actually going to start to matter. Not that I intend to go to college or anything. At least not right away. I, like Prince William, intend to take a year off between high school and college. But I hope to spend it developing some kind of gift or talent, or, if I can’t find one, volunteering for Greenpeace, hopefully in one of those boats that goes out between Japanese and Russian whaling ships and the whales. I don’t think Greenpeace takes volunteers who don’t have at least a 3.0 grade-point average.

  Anyway, it was murder getting up this morning, especially when, after I’d dragged out my school uniform, I realized my Queen Amidala panties weren’t in my underwear drawer. I have to wear my Queen Amidala underwear on the first day of every semester, or I’ll have bad luck for the rest of the year. I always have good luck when I wear my Queen Amidala panties. For instance, I was wearing them the night of the Nondenominational Winter Dance, when Michael finally told me he loved me.

  Not that he was IN LOVE with me, of course. But that he loved me. Hopefully not like a friend.

  I have to wear my Queen Amidala panties on the first day of second semester, just like I’ll have to send them to the laundry-by-the-pound place and get them washed before Friday so I can wear them on my date with Michael. Because I’m going to need extra good luck that night, if I’m going to have to compete with the Kate Bosworths of the world for his attentions… and also since I plan on giving Michael his birthday present that night. His birthday present that I’m hoping he’ll like so much, he’ll totally fall in love with me, if he hasn’t already.

  So I had to go into my mom’s room, the one she shares with Mr. Gianini, and wake her up (thank God Mr. G was in the shower, I swear to God if I�
��d had to see them in bed together in the condition I was in at that time, I’d have gone completely Anne Heche) and be all, “Mom, where’s my Queen Amidala underwear?”

  My mom, who sleeps like a log even when she isn’t pregnant, just went, “Shurnowog,” which isn’t even a word.

  “Mom,” I said. “I need my Queen Amidala underwear. Where are they?”

  But all my mom said was, “Kapukin.”

  So then I got an idea. Not that I really thought there was any way my mom wasn’t going to let me go out with Michael, after her uplifting speech about him the night before. But just to make sure she couldn’t back out of it, I went, “Mom, can I go with Michael for dinner and a movie at the Screening Room this Friday night?”

  And she went, rolling over, “Yeah, yeah, scuniper.”

  So I got that taken care of.

  But I still had to go to school in my regular underwear, which creeped me out a little, because there’s nothing special about it, it is just boring and white.

  But then I kind of perked up when I got in the limo, because of the prospect of seeing Michael and all.

  But then I was like, Oh, my God, what was going to happen when I saw Michael? Because when you haven’t seen your boyfriend in thirty-two days, you can’t just be all, “Oh, hi,” when you see him. You have to, like, give him a hug or something .

  But how was I going to give him a hug in the car? With everyone watching? I mean, at least I wasn’t going to have to worry about my stepdad, since Mr. G fully refuses to take the limo to school with me and Lars and Lilly and Michael every morning, even though we are all going to the same place. But Mr. Gianini says he likes the subway. He says it is the only time he gets to listen to music he likes (Mom and I won’t let him play Blood, Sweat and Tears in the loft, so he has to listen to it on his Discman).