Princess in Love

  We probably would have talked longer, but right then my mom yelled at me to get off line, since she’s waiting to hear from Mr. Gianini, who, surprisingly, still wasn’t home from school, even though it was past dinnertime. So I logged off.

  This is the second time Michael’s asked if I’m going to the Winter Carnival. What’s up with that?

  Friday, December 12, 9 p.m., the loft

  Now we know why Mr. G was so late getting home:

  He stopped along the way to buy a Christmas tree.

  Not just any Christmas tree, either, but a twelve-footer that must be at least six feet wide at the base.

  I didn’t say anything negative, of course, because my mom was so happy and excited about it, and immediately lugged out all of her Dead Celebrity Christmas ornaments (my mom doesn’t use pretty glass balls or tinsel on her Christmas tree, like normal people. Instead, she paints pieces of tin with the likenesses of celebrities who have died that year, and hangs those on the tree. Which is why we probably have the only tree in North America with ornaments commemorating Richard and Pat Nixon, Elvis, Audrey Hepburn, Kurt Cobain, Jim Henson, John Belushi, Rock Hudson, Alec Guiness, Divine, John Lennon, and many, many more).

  And Mr. Gianini kept looking over at me, to see if I was happy, too. He got the tree, he said, because he knew what a bad day I’d had, and he didn’t want it to be a total loss.

  Mr. G, of course, has no idea what my English term paper topic is.

  What was I supposed to say? I mean, he’d already gone out and bought it, and you know a tree that size had to have cost a lot of money. And he’d meant to do a nice thing. He really had.

  Still, I wish the people around here would consult me about things before just going out and doing them. Like the whole pregnancy thing, and now this tree. If Mr. G had asked me, I would have been like, Let’s go to the Big Kmart on Astor Place and get a nice fake tree so we don’t contribute to the destruction of the polar bear’s natural habitat, okay?

  Only he didn’t ask me.

  And the truth is, even if he had, my mom would never have gone for it. Her favorite part of Christmas is lying on the floor with her head under the tree, gazing up through the branches and inhaling the sweet tangy smell of pine sap. She says it’s the only memory of her Indiana childhood she actually likes.

  It’s hard to think about the polar bears when your mom says something like that.

  Saturday, December 13, 2 p.m., Lilly’s apartment

  Well, the first meeting of the Students Against the Corporatization of Albert Einstein High School is a complete bust.

  That’s because nobody showed up but me and Boris Pelkowski. I am a little miffed that Kenny didn’t come. You would think that if he really loves me as much as he says he does, he would take any opportunity whatsoever to be near me, even a boring meeting of the Students Against the Corporatization of Albert Einstein High School.

  But I guess even Kenny’s love is not that great. As should be obvious to me by now, considering the fact that there are exactly six days until the Nondenominational Winter Dance, and Kenny STILL HASN’T ASKED ME IF I WANT TO GO WITH HIM.

  Not that I’m worried, or anything. I mean, a girl who set off a fire alarm AND smashed Lana Weinberger’s cell phone, worried about not having a date to a stupid dance?

  All right. I’m worried.

  But not worried enough to pull a Sadie Hawkins and ask him to the dance.

  Lilly is pretty much inconsolable over the fact that no one but Boris and me showed up for her meeting. I tried to tell her that everybody is too busy studying for finals to worry about privatization at the moment, but she doesn’t seem to care. Right now she is sitting on the couch, with Boris speaking to her in a soothing voice. Boris is pretty gross and all—with his sweaters that he always tucks into his pants, and that weird retainer his orthodontist makes him wear—but you can tell he genuinely loves Lilly. I mean, look at the tender way he is gazing at her as she sobs about how she is going to call her congressmember.

  It makes my heart hurt, looking at Boris looking at Lilly.

  I guess I must be jealous. I want a boy to look at me like that. And I don’t mean Kenny, either. I mean a boy who I actually like back, as more than just a friend.

  I can’t take it anymore. I am going into the kitchen to see what Maya, the Moscovitzes’ housekeeper, is doing. Even helping to wash things has to be better than this.

  Saturday, December 13, 2:30 p.m., Lilly’s apartment

  Maya wasn’t in the kitchen. She was here, in Michael’s room, putting away his school uniform, which she just finished ironing. Maya is going around picking up Michael’s things and telling me about her son Manuel. Thanks to the help of the Drs. Moscovitz, Manuel was recently released from the prison in the Dominican Republic where he’d been wrongfully held for suspicion of having committed crimes against the state. Now Manuel is starting his own political party, and Maya is just as proud as can be, except she is worried he might end up back in prison if he doesn’t tone down the anti-government stuff a little.

  Manuel and Lilly have a lot in common, I guess.

  Maya’s stories about Manuel are always interesting, but it is much more interesting to be in Michael’s room. I have been in it before, of course, but never while he was gone (he is at school, even though it is Saturday, working in the computer lab on his project for the Carnival; apparently the school’s modem is faster than his. Also, I suppose, though I hate to admit it, he and Judith Gershner can freely practice their downloading there, without fear of parental interruption).

  So I am lying on Michael’s bed while Maya putters around, folding shirts and muttering about sugar, one of her native land’s main exports and apparently a source of some consternation to her son’s political platform, while Michael’s dog, Pavlov, sits next to me, panting on my face. I can’t help thinking, This is what it’s like to be Michael: This is what Michael sees when he looks up at his ceiling at night (he has put glow-in-the-dark stars up there, in the form of the spiral galaxy Andromeda) and This is how Michael’s sheets smell (springtime fresh, thanks to the detergent Maya uses) and This is what the view of Michael’s desk looks like from his bed.

  Except that looking over at his desk, I just noticed something. It’s one of my cards! The one with the strawberry on it!

  It isn’t exactly on display, or anything. It’s just sitting on his desk. But hey, that’s a far cry from being crumpled at the bottom of his backpack. It shows that the cards mean something to him, that he hasn’t buried them under all the other junk on his desk—the DOS manuals and anti-Microsoft literature—or worse, thrown them away.

  This is somewhat heartening.

  Uh-oh. I just heard the front door open. Michael??? Or the Drs. Moscovitz???? I better get out of here. Michael doesn’t have all those Enter At Your Own Risk signs on the door for nothing.

  Saturday, December 13, 3 p.m., Grandmère’s

  How, you might ask, did I go from the Moscovitzes’ apartment to my grandmother’s suite at the Plaza in the space of a mere half hour?

  Well, I’ll tell you.

  Disaster has struck, in the form of Sebastiano.

  I always suspected, of course, that Sebastiano was not the sweet-tempered innocent he pretended to be. But now it looks like the only murder Sebastiano needs to worry about is his own. Because if my dad ever gets his hands on him, Sebastiano is one dead fashion designer.

  Looking at it objectively, I think I can safely say I’d prefer to have been murdered. I mean, I’d be dead and all, which would be sad—especially since I still haven’t written down those instructions for caring for Fat Louie while I’m gone—but at least I wouldn’t have to show up for school on Monday.

  But now, not only do I have to show up for school on Monday, but I have to show up for school on Monday knowing that every single one of my fellow classmates is going to have seen the supplement that arrived in the Sunday Times: the supplement featuring about twenty photos of ME standing in front of a triple
mirror in dresses by Sebastiano, with the words “Fashion Fit for a Princess” emblazoned all over the place.

  Oh, yes. I’m not kidding. Fashion Fit for a Princess.

  I can’t really blame him, I guess. Sebastiano, I mean. I suppose the opportunity was too much for him to resist. He is, after all, a businessman, and having a princess model your clothes . . . well, you can’t buy exposure like that.

  Because you know all the other papers are going to pick up on the story. You know, Princess of Genovia Makes Modeling Debut. That kind of thing.

  So with just one little photo spread, Sebastiano is going to get virtual worldwide coverage of his new clothing line.

  A clothing line that it looks like I have endorsed.

  Grandmère doesn’t understand why my dad and I are so upset. Well, I think she gets why my dad is upset. You know the whole “My daughter is being used” thing. She just doesn’t get why I’m so unhappy. “You look perfectly beautiful,” she keeps saying.

  Yeah. Like that helps.

  Grandmère thinks I am overreacting. But hello, have I ever aspired to tread in Claudia Schiffer’s footsteps? I don’t think so. Fashion is so not what I’m about. What about the environment? What about the rights of animals? What about the HORSESHOE CRABS??????

  People are not going to believe I didn’t pose for those photos. People are going to think I am a sellout. People are going to think I am a stuck-up model snob.

  I would so rather that they think I am a juvenile delinquent, I can’t tell you.

  Little did I know when I heard the front door to the Moscovitzes’ apartment opening, and I hustled out of Michael’s room, that I was about to be greeted by the disastrous news. It was only Lilly’s parents, after all, coming home from the gym, where they’d met with their personal trainers. Afterward, they’d stopped to have a latte and read the Sunday Times, large sections of which arrive, for reasons no one understands, on Saturday, if you have a subscription.

  What a surprise they had had, when they’d opened up the paper and saw the Princess of Genovia hawking this hot new fashion designer’s spring collection.

  What a surprise I had, when the Drs. Moscovitz congratulated me on my new modeling career, and I was all, “What are you talking about?”

  So, while Lilly and Boris looked on with curiosity, Dr. Moscovitz opened her paper and showed me:

  And there it was, in all of its four-color-layout glory.

  I’m not going to lie and say I looked bad. I looked okay. What they had done was, they had taken all the photos Sebastiano’s assistant had snapped of me trying to decide which dress to wear to my introduction to the people of Genovia and laid them all out on this purple background. I’m not smiling in the pictures, or anything. I’m just looking at myself in the mirror, clearly going, in my head, Ew, could I look more like a walking toothpick?

  But of course, if you didn’t know me, and didn’t know WHY I was trying on all these dresses, I’d seem like some freak who cares WAY too much about how she looks in a party dress.

  Which is exactly the kind of person I’ve always wanted to be portrayed as.

  NOT!!!!!!!

  I have to admit, I am a little hurt. I’d thought, when he’d asked me all those questions about Michael, Sebastiano and I had kind of made a connection. But I guess not. Not if he could do something like this.

  My dad has already called the Times and demanded that they remove the supplement from all the papers that haven’t been delivered yet. He has called the concierge of the Plaza and insisted on Sebastiano being listed as persona non grata, which means the cousin to the prince of Genovia won’t be allowed to set foot on hotel property.

  I thought this was a little harsh, but not as harsh as what my dad wanted to do, which was call the NYPD and press charges against Sebastiano for using the likeness of a minor without the consent of her parents. Thank God Grandmère talked him out of that. She said there’d be enough publicity about this without the added humiliation of a royal arrest.

  My dad is still so mad he can’t sit still. He is pacing back and forth across the suite. Rommel is watching him very nervously from Grandmère’s lap, his head moving back and forth, back and forth, his eyes following my dad as if he were watching the US Open or something.

  I bet if Sebastiano were here, my dad would smash up a lot more than just his cell phone.

  Saturday, December 13, 5 p.m., the loft

  Well.

  All I can say is, Grandmère’s really done it this time.

  I’m serious. I don’t think my dad is ever going to speak to her again.

  And I know I never will.

  And okay, she’s an old lady and she didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong, and I should really be more understanding.

  But for her to do this—for her not to even take into consideration my feelings—I frankly don’t think I will ever be able to forgive her.

  What happened was, Sebastiano called right before I was getting ready to leave the hotel. He was completely perplexed about why my dad is so mad at him. He tried to come upstairs to see us, he said, but Plaza security stopped him.

  When my dad, who’d answered the phone, told Sebastiano that the reason Plaza security stopped him was because he’d been PNG’d, and then explained why, Sebastiano was even more upset. He kept going, “But I had your permish! I had your permish, Phillipe!”

  “My permission to use my daughter’s image to promote your tawdry rags?” My father was disgusted. “You most certainly did not!”

  But Sebastiano kept insisting he had.

  And little by little, it came out that he had had permission, in a way. Only not from me. And not my dad, either. Guess who, it appears, gave it to him?

  Grandmère went, all indignantly, “I only did it, Phillipe, because Amelia, as you know, suffers from a terrible self-image, and needed a boost.”

  But my dad was so enraged, he wouldn’t even listen to her. He just thundered, “And so to repair her self-image, you went behind her back and gave permission for her photo to be used in an advertisement for women’s clothing?”

  Grandmère didn’t have much to say after that. She just stood there, going “Uhn . . . uhn . . . uhn . . .” like someone in a horror movie who’d been pinned to a wall with a machete but wasn’t quite dead yet (I always close my eyes during parts like this, so I know exactly what it sounds like).

  It became clear that even if Grandmère had had a reasonable excuse for her behavior, my father wasn’t going to listen to it—or let me listen to it, either. He stalked over to me, grabbed my arm, and marched me right out of the suite.

  I thought we were going to have a bonding moment, like fathers and daughters always do on TV, where he’d tell me that Grandmère was a very sick woman and that he was going to send her somewhere where she could take a nice, long rest, but instead all he said was, “Go home.”

  Then he handed me over to Lars—after slamming the door to Grandmère’s suite VERY loudly behind him, before storming off in the direction of his own suite.

  Jeez.

  It just goes to show, even a royal family can be dysfunctional.

  Couldn’t you just see us on Ricki Lake?

  Ricki: Clarisse, tell us: Why did you allow Sebastiano to put your granddaughter’s photos in that Times advertising supplement?

  Grandmère: That’s Your Royal Highness to you, Ms. Lake. I did it to boost her self-esteem.

  I just know that when I get to school on Monday, everybody is going to be all, “Oh, look, here comes Mia, that big FAKE, with her vegetarianism and her animal-rights activism and her looks-aren’t-important-it’s-what’s-on-the-inside-that-matters-ism. But I guess it’s all right to pose for fashion photo shoots, isn’t it, Mia?”

  As if it wasn’t enough to be suspended. Now I am going to be sneered at by my peers, too.

  I’m home now, trying to pretend none of it ever happened. This is difficult, of course, because when I walked back into the loft, I saw that my mom had already pulled
the supplement out of our paper and drawn little devil horns coming out of my head in every picture, then stuck the whole thing onto the refrigerator.

  While I appreciate this bit of whimsy, it does not make the fact that I will have to show my face—now plastered all over advertising supplements throughout the tristate area—in school on Monday any easier.

  Surprisingly, there is one good thing that’s come out of all of this: I know for sure I look best in the white taffeta number with the blue sash. My dad says over his dead body am I going to wear it, or any other Sebastiano creation, again. But there isn’t another designer in Genovia who could do as good a job, let alone finish the dress in time. So it looks like the dress by Sebastiano, which got delivered to the loft this morning, is it.

  Which is one thing off my mind, anyway.

  I guess.

  Saturday, December 13, 8 p.m., the loft

  I’ve already gotten seventeen e-mails, six phone calls, and one visitor (Lilly) about the fashion thing. Lilly says it’s not as bad as I think, and that most people throw the supplements away without even looking at them.

  If that’s true, I said, why are all these people calling and e-mailing me?

  She tried to make out like it was all members of the Students Against the Corporatization of Albert Einstein High School, calling to show their solidarity with my suspension, but I think we both know better:

  It’s all people who want to know what I was thinking, selling out like that.

  How am I ever going to explain that I had nothing to do with it, that I didn’t even know about it? Nobody is going to believe that. I mean, the proof is right there: I’m wearing the proof. There’s photographic evidence of it.

  My reputation is going down the drain, even as I sit here. Tomorrow morning, millions of subscribers to The New York Times are going to open their papers and be like, “Oh, look, Princess Mia. Sold out already. Wonder how much she got paid? You wouldn’t think she’d need the money, what with being royal, and all.”