Princess in Waiting

by Meg Cabot

I was impressed. I have never been invited to a breakfast meeting with producers before. Just the Genovian ambassador to Spain.

  I asked Lilly if she had come up with a list of demands for the producers, and she said she had, but she wouldn’t tell me what they were.

  I think I am going to have to watch this movie, and see what’s making her so mad. My mom has it on tape. She said it was one of the funniest things she has ever seen.

  But then, my mom laughs all through Dirty Dancing , even the parts that aren’t supposed to be funny, so I don’t know if she is the best judge.

  Uh-oh. One of the cheerleaders (sadly, not Lana) tore her Achilles tendon doing pilates over the break, so they just announced they are holding tryouts for a replacement, as the team’s alternate got transferred to a girls’ school in Massachusetts due to having too wild of a party while her parents were in Martinique.

  I sincerely hope Lilly is too busy protesting the movie of my life to protest the new cheerleading tryouts. Last semester she made me walk around with a big sign that said CHEERLEADING IS SEXIST AND NOT A SPORT , which I am not even sure is technically true, since they have cheerleading championships on ESPN. But it is a fact that there are no cheerleaders for the female sports in our school. Like Lana and her gang never turn out for the girls’ basketball team or the girls’ volleyball team, but they never miss a boys’ game. So maybe the sexist part is true.

  Oh, God, a geek just came in with a hall pass. A hall pass for me! I am being summoned to the office! And I didn’t even do anything! Well, not this time, anyway.

  Wednesday, January 21, Principal Gupta’s office

  I can’t believe it is only the second day of second semester, and already I am sitting here in the principal’s office. I might not have finished my homework, but I fully have a note from my stepdad. I turned it in to the administrative office first thing. It says:

  Please excuse Mia for not completing her homework for Tuesday, January 20. She was crippled with jet lag, and unable to attend to her academic responsibilities last evening. She will of course make up the work tonight.

  —Frank Gianini

  It kind of sucks when your stepdad is also your teacher.

  But why would Principal Gupta object to this? I mean, I realize it is only the second day of second semester, and already I’ve fallen behind. But I’m not that far behind.

  And I haven’t even seen Lana today, so it’s not like I could have done anything to her or her personal belongings.

  OH, MY GOD. It just occurred to me. What if they realize they made a mistake, putting me back in Gifted and Talented? I mean, because I have no gifts or talents? What if I was only put in there in the first place because of some computer glitch, and now they’ve corrected it, and they’re going to put me in Tech Ed or Domestic Arts, where I belong? I will have to make a spice rack!!! Or worse, a western omelet!!!

  And I will never see Michael anymore! Okay, I will see him on the way to school and during lunch and after school and on weekends and holidays, but that’s it. By taking me out of Gifted and Talented class, they will be depriving me of five whole hours of Michael a week! And true, during class we don’t talk all that much, because Michael really is gifted and talented, unlike me, and needs to use that class period to hone his musical abilities instead of tutoring me, which is what he generally ends up doing thanks to my uselessness at Algebra.

  But still, at least we are together .

  Oh, God, this is awful! If I really do turn out to have a talent—which I doubt—WHY didn’t Lilly just tell me what it is? Then I could throw it in Principal Gupta’s face when she tries to deport me back to Tech Ed.

  Wait… who does that voice belong to? The one coming from Principal Gupta’s office? It sounds kind of familiar. It sounds kind of like…

  Wednesday, January 21, Grandmère’s limo

  I cannot believe Grandmère just did this. I mean, what kind of person DOES this? Just yanks a teenager out of school like this?

  She is supposed to be the adult. She is supposed to be setting a good example for me.

  And what does she do instead?

  Well, first she tells a big fat LIE, and then she removes me from school property under false pretenses.

  I am telling you, if my mom or dad finds out about this, Clarisse Renaldo will be a dead woman.

  And not like she didn’t practically give me a heart attack, you know. Good thing my cholesterol and everything is so low thanks to my vegetarian diet, otherwise I might have suffered a serious cardial infarction, she scared me so bad, coming out of Principal Gupta’s office like that and being all, “Well, yes, we are of course praying for his quick recovery, but you know how these things can be—”

  I felt all the blood run out of my face at the sight of her. Not just because, you know, it was Grandmère, talking to Principal Gupta, of all people, but because of what she was saying.

  I stood up fast, my heart pounding so hard, I thought it might go flying right out of my chest.

  “What is it?” I asked, all panicky. “Is it my dad? Is the cancer back? Is that it? You can tell me, I can take it.”

  I was sure, from the way Grandmère was talking to Principal Gupta, that my dad’s testicular cancer was back, and that he was going to have to go through treatment for it all over again—

  “I will tell you in the car,” Grandmère said to me, stiffly. “Come along.”

  “No, really,” I said, trailing after her, with Lars trailing after me. “You can tell me now. I can take it, I swear I can. Is Dad all right?”

  “Don’t worry about your homework, Mia,” Principal Gupta called to us as we left her office. “You just concentrate on being there for your father.”

  So it was true! Dad was sick!

  “Is it the cancer again?” I asked Grandmère as we left the school and headed down to her limo, which was parked out front by the stone lion that guards the steps up to Albert Einstein High. “Do the doctors think it’s treatable? Does he need a bone marrow transplant? Because you know, we’re probably a match, on account of my having his hair. At least, what his hair must have looked like, back when he had some.”

  It wasn’t until we were safely inside the limo that Grandmère gave me a very disgusted look and said, “Really, Amelia. There is nothing wrong with your father. There is, however, something wrong with that school of yours. Imagine, not allowing their pupils any sort of absences except in the case of illness. Ridiculous! Sometimes, you know, people need a day. A personal day, I think they call it. Well, today, Amelia, is your personal day.”

  I blinked at her from my side of the limo. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean… Dad isn’t sick?”

  “Pfuit!” Grandmère said, her drawn-on eyebrows raised way up. “He certainly seemed healthy enough when I spoke to him this morning.”

  “Then what—” I stared at her. “Why did you tell Principal Gupta—”

  “Because otherwise she would not have allowed you out of class,” Grandmère said, glancing at her gold-and-diamond watch. “And we are late, as it is. Really, there is nothing worse than an overzealous educator. They think they are helping, when in reality, you know, there are many different varieties of learning. Not all of it takes place in a classroom.”

  Comprehension was beginning to dawn. Grandmère had not pulled me out of school in the middle of the day because anyone in my family was sick. No, Grandmère had pulled me out of school because she wanted to teach me something.

  “Grandmère,” I cried, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. “You can’t just drive over and yank me out of school whenever you want to. And you certainly can’t tell Principal Gupta that my dad is sick when he isn’t! How could you even say something like that? Don’t you know anything about self-fulfilling prophecies? I mean, if you go around lying about stuff like that all the time, it could actually come true—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Amelia,” Grandmère said. “Your f
ather is not going to have to go back to the hospital just because I told a little white lie to an academic administrator.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so sure of that,” I said angrily. “And anyway, where do you think you’re taking me? I can’t afford to just be leaving school in the middle of the day, you know, Grandmère. I mean, I am not as smart as most of the other kids in my class, and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, thanks to the fact that I went to bed so early last night—”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” Grandmère said, very sarcastically. “I know how much you enjoy your Algebra class. I am sure it is a very great deprivation to you, missing it today….”

  I couldn’t deny that she was right. At least partially. While I wasn’t all that thrilled about the method by which she’d done it, the fact that Grandmère had extracted me from Algebra wasn’t exactly something I was about to cry over. I mean, come on. Integers are not my best thing.

  “Well, wherever we’re going,” I said severely, “we better be back in time for lunch. Because Michael will wonder where I am—”

  “Not that boy again,” Grandmère said, lifting her gaze to the limo’s sunroof with a sigh.

  “Yes, that boy ,” I said. “That boy I happen to love with all of my heart and soul. And Grandmère, if you could just meet him, you’d know—”

  “Oh, we’re here,” Grandmère said, with some relief, as her driver pulled over. “At last. Get out, Amelia.”

  I got out of the limo, then looked around to see where Grandmère had brought me. But all I saw was the big Chanel store on Fifty-seventh Street. But that couldn’t be where we were headed. Could it?

  But when Grandmère untangled Rommel from his Louis Vuitton leash, put him on the ground, and began striding purposefully toward those big glass doors, I saw that Chanel was exactly where we were headed.

  “Grandmère,” I cried, rushing after her. “Chanel? You pulled me out of class to take me shopping ?”

  “You need a gown,” Grandmère said with a sniff, “for the black-and-white ball at the Contessa Trevanni’s this Friday. This was the soonest I could get an appointment.”

  “Black-and-white ball?” I echoed as Lars escorted us into the hushed white interior of Chanel, the world’s most exclusive fashion boutique—the kind of store that, before I found out I was a princess, I would have been too terrified even to set foot in… although I can’t say the same for my friends, as Lilly once filmed an entire episode of her cable access show from inside a dressing room at Chanel. She’d barricaded herself in and was trying on Karl Lagerfeld’s latest creations and wouldn’t come out until security broke the door down and escorted her to the sidewalk. It had been a show on how haute couture designers are completely sizeist, seeing as how it is impossible to find leather pants in anything larger than a misses’ size ten. “What black-and-white ball?”

  “Surely your mother told you,” Grandmère said, as a tall, reed-thin woman approached us with cries of, “Your Royal Highnesses! How delightful to see you.”

  “My mother didn’t tell me anything about a ball,” I said. “When did you say it was?”

  “Friday night,” Grandmère said to me. To the saleslady she said, “Yes, I believe you’ve put aside some gowns for my granddaughter. I specifically requested white ones.” Grandmère blinked owlishly at me. “You are too young for black. I don’t want to hear any arguing about it.”

  Argue about it? How could I argue about something I hadn’t even begun to understand?

  “Of course,” the saleslady was saying with a big smile. “Come with me, won’t you, Your Highness?”

  “Friday night?” I cried, that part, at least, of what was going on beginning to sink in. “Friday night? Grandmère, I can’t go to any ball on Friday night. I already made plans with—”

  But Grandmère just put her hand in the center of my back and pushed.

  And then I was tripping after the saleslady, who didn’t even blink an eye, as if princesses in combat boots go tripping after her all the time.

  And now I am sitting in Grandmère’s limo on my way back to school, and all I can think about are the number of people I would like to thank for my current predicament, foremost among which is my mother, for forgetting to tell me that she had already given Grandmère permission to drag me to this thing; the Contessa Trevanni, for having a black-and-white ball in the first place; the salespeople at Chanel, who, although they are very nice, are really all just a bunch of enablers, as they have enabled my grandma to garb me in a white diamante ball gown and drag me to something I have no desire to attend in the first place; my father, for setting his mother loose upon the helpless city of Manhattan without anyone to supervise her; and of course Grandmère herself, for completely ruining my life.

  Because when I told her, while the Chanel people were throwing yards of fabric over me, that I cannot possibly attend Contessa Trevanni’s black-and-white ball this Friday night, as that is the night Michael and I are supposed to have our first date, she responded by giving me a big lecture about how a princess’s first duty is to her people. Her heart, Grandmère says, must always come second.

  I tried to explain how this date could not be postponed or rescheduled, as Star Wars would only be showing at the Screening Room that night, and that after that they would go back to showing Moulin Rouge , which I won’t see because I heard someone dies at the end.

  But Grandmère refused to see that my date with Michael was anywhere near as important as Contessa Trevanni’s black-and-white ball. Apparently Contessa Trevanni is a very socially prominent member of the Monaco royal family, besides being some kind of distant cousin (who isn’t?) of ours. My not attending her black-and-white ball here in the city with all the other debutantes would be a slight from which the royal house of Grimaldi might never recover.

  I pointed out that my not attending Star Wars with Michael will be a slight from which my relationship with my boyfriend might never recover. But Grandmère said only that if Michael really loves me, he’ll understand when I have to cancel on him.

  “And if he doesn’t,” Grandmère said, exhaling a plume of gray smoke from the Gitanes she was sucking down, “then he was never appropriate consort material to begin with.”

  Which is very easy for Grandmère to say. She hasn’t been in love with Michael since the first grade. She doesn’t spend hours and hours attempting to write poems befitting his greatness. She doesn’t know what it is to love, since the only person Grandmère has ever been in love with in her entire life is herself.

  Well, it’s true.

  And now we are pulling up to the school. It is lunchtime. In a minute I will have to go inside and explain to Michael how I cannot make it to our first date, or it will cause an international incident from which the country over which I will one day rule may never recover.

  Why couldn’t Grandmère just have sent me to boarding school in Massachusetts instead?

  Wednesday, January 21, G & T

  I couldn’t tell him.

  I mean, how could I? Especially when he was being so nice to me during lunch. Everybody in the whole school, it seemed, knew that Grandmère had come and taken me away during homeroom. In her chinchilla cape, with those eyebrows, and Rommel at her side, how could anyone have missed her? She is as conspicuous as Cher.

  Everyone was all concerned, you know, about the supposed illness in my family. Michael especially. He was all, “Is there anything I can do? Your Algebra homework, or something? I know it isn’t much, but it’s the least I could do….”

  How could I tell him the truth—that my father wasn’t sick; that my grandmother had dragged me off in the middle of school to take me shopping ? Shopping for a dress to wear at a ball to which he was not invited, and which was to take place during the exact time we were supposed to be enjoying dinner and a space fantasy set in a galaxy far, far away?

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone. I just sat there at lunch being all quiet. People mistook my lack of talkat
iveness for extreme mental distress. Which it was, actually, only not for the reasons they thought. Basically all I was thinking as I sat there was I HATE MY GRANDMOTHER. I HATE MY GRANDMOTHER. I HATE MY GRANDMOTHER. I HATE MY GRANDMOTHER.

  I really, really do.

  As soon as lunch was over, I snuck off to one of the pay phones outside the auditorium doors and called home. I knew my mom would be there instead of at her studio because she is still working on the nursery walls. She’d gotten to the third wall, on which she was depicting a highly realistic painting of the fall of Saigon.

  “Oh, Mia,” she said, when I asked her if there wasn’t something she’d possibly forgotten to mention to me. “I am so sorry. Your grandmother called during Anna Nicole . You know how I get during Anna Nicole .”

  “Mom,” I said through gritted teeth. “Why did you tell her it was okay for me to go to this stupid thing? You told me I could go out with Michael that night!”

  “I did?” My mom sounded bewildered. And why shouldn’t she have? She clearly did not remember the conversation she’d had with me about my date with Michael… primarily of course because she’d been dead to the world during it. Still, she didn’t need to know that. What was important was that she was made to feel as guilty as possible for the heinous crime she had committed. “Oh, honey. I am so sorry. Well, you’re just going to have to cancel with Michael. He’ll understand.”

  “Mom,” I cried. “He will not! This was supposed to be our first real date! You’ve got to do something!”

  “Well,” my mom said, sounding kind of wry. “I’m a little surprised to hear you’re so unhappy about it, sweetheart. You know, considering your whole thing about not wanting to chase Michael. Canceling your first date with him would definitely fall into that category.”

  “Very funny, Mom,” I said. “But Jane wouldn’t cancel her first date with Mr. Rochester. She just wouldn’t call him all the time beforehand, or let him get to second base during it.”