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 Renaldo 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 Grandmere said only that if Michael really loves me, he'll understand when I have to cancel.

'And if he doesn't,' Grandmere said, exhaling a plume of grey smoke from the Gitanes she was sucking down, 'then he

was never appropriate consort material to begin with.'

Which is very easy for Grandmere 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 Grandmere 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 Grandmere just have shot me instead?









Wednesday, January 20,

Gifted and Talented





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 Grandmere had come and taken me away during second period. 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 help with? Your Algebra homework, or something? I know it isn't much, but it's the least I can 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 have been 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 talkativeness for extreme mental duress. 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 sneaked 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, God, 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 Ab Fab. You know how I get during Ab Fab.''

'Mom,' I said, dirough gritted teeth. 'Why did you tell her it was OK 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? 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 Michael. He'll understand.'

'Mom,' I cried. 'He will not! This was supposed to be our first 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. Cancelling your first date with him would definitely fall

under 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.'

'Oh,' my mom said.

'Look,' I said. 'This is serious. You've got to get me out of this stupid ball!'

But all my mom said was that she'd talk to my dad about it. I knew what that meant, of course. No way was I getting out

of this ball. My dad has never in his life forsaken duty for love.

So now I am sitting here (doing nothing, as usual, because I am neither gifted nor talented), knowing that at some point or another I am going to have to tell Michael our date is cancelled. Only how? How am I going to do it? And what if he's so

mad he never asks me out again?

Worse, what if he asks some other girl to see Star Wars with him? I mean, some girl who knows all the lines you're suppose

to shout at the screen during the movie. Like when Ben Kenobi goes, 'Obi Wan. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time,' you're supposed to shout, 'How long?' and then Ben goes, 'A very long time.'

There must be a million girls besides me who know about this. Michael could ask any one of them instead of me and have

a perfecdy wonderful time. Without me.

Lilly is bugging to find out what's wrong. She keeps passing me notes, because they are fumigating the teachers' lounge, so

Mrs. Hill is in here today, pretending to grade papers from her fourth period computer class. But really she is ordering

things from a Garnet Hill catalogue. I saw it beneath her gradebook.

Is your dad super-sick? Lilly's latest note reads. Are you going to have to fly back to Genovia?

No, I wrote back.

Is it the cancer? Lilly wants to know. Did he have a recurrence?

No, I wrote back.

Well, what is it, then? Lilly's handwriting was getting spiky, a sure sign she was becoming impatient with me.

Why won't you tell me?

Because, I wanted to scrawl back, in big capital letters, the truth will lead to the imminent demise of my

romantic relationship with your brother, and I couldn't bear that! Don't you see I can't live without him?

But I couldn't write that. Because I wasn't ready to give up yet. I mean, wasn't I a princess of the royal house of Renaldo?

Do princesses of the royal house of Renaldo give up, just like that, when something they hold as dearly as I hold Michael

is at stake?

No, they do not. Look at my ancestresses, Agnes and Rosagunde. Agnes jumped off a bridge in order to get what she

wanted (not to be a nun). And Rosagunde strangled a guy with her own hair (in order not to have to sleep with him).

Was I, Mia Thermopolis, going to let a little thing like the Contessa Trevanni's black-and-white ball get in the way of my

having my first date with the man I love?

No, I was not.

Perhaps this, then, is my talent. The indomitability that I inherited from the Renaldo princesses before me.

Struck by this realization, I wrote a hasty note to Lilly:

Is my talent that I, like my ancestresses before me, am indomitable?

I waited breathlessly for her response. Aldiough it was not clear to me what I was going to do if she replied in the positive. Because what kind of talent is being indomitable? I mean, you can't get paid for it, the way you can if your talent is playing

the violin or songwriting or producing cable access television programmes.

Still, it would be good to know I'd figured out my talent on my own. You know, as far as climbing the Jungian tree to self-actualization went.

But Lilly's response was way disappointing:

No, your talent is not that you're indomitable, dinkus. God, U R so dense sometimes. WHAT IS WRONG

WITH YOUR DAD?????

Sighing, I realized I had no choice but to write back,

Nothing. Grandmere just wanted to take me to Chanel, so she made up the thing about my dad being sick.

God, Lilly wrote back. No wonder you're looking like you ate a sock again. Your grandmother sucks.

I could not agree more. If only Lilly knew the full extent of just how much.








Wednesday, January 20,

Sixth Period, Third-floor Stairwell





Emergency meeting of the followers of the Jane Eyre technique of boyfriend-handling. We are, of course, in peril of

discovery at any moment as we are skipping French in order to gather here in the stairwell leading to the roof (the door

to which is locked: Lilly says in the movie of my life, the kids got to go on the roof of their school all the time. Just another example of how art most certainly does not imitate life), so that we can lend succour to one of our sisters in suffering.

That's right. It turns out that I am not the only one for whom the semester is off to an inauspicious beginning. Not only did

Tina sprain her ankle on the ski slopes of Aspen -no, she also got a text message from Dave Farouq El-Abar on her new mobile phone in fifth period. It said, U NEVER CALLED BACK. AM TAKING JASMINE TO RANGERS GAME.

HAVE A NICE LIFE ;-)

I have never in my life seen anything so insensitive as that text message. I swear, my blood went cold as I read it.

'Sexist pig,' Lilly said, when she saw it. 'Don't even worry about it, Tina. You'll find somebody better.'

'I d-don't want someone b-better,' Tina sobbed. 'I only want D-Dave!'

It breaks my heart to see her in such pain - not just her emotional pain, either, because it was no joke trying to get up the third-floor staircase on her crutches. I have promised faithfully to sit with her while she works through her anguish (Lilly is

taking her through Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief: Denial - I can't believe he would do this to me; Bargaining — Maybe if I tell him I'll call him faithfully every night, he'll take me back; Anger -Jasmine is a cow who Frenches on the first

date; Depression - I'll never love another man again; Acceptance - Well, I guess he was kind of selfish). Of course, being

here with Tina, instead of in French class, means I am risking possible suspension, which is the penalty for skipping class

here at Albert Einstein.

But what is more important? My disciplinary record or my friend?

Besides, Lars is keeping lookout at the bottom of the stairs. If Mr Kreblutz, the chief custodian, comes along Lars is going

to whistle the Genovian national anthem and we'll flatten ourselves against the wall by the old gym mats (which are quite

smelly, by the way, and undoubtedly a fire hazard).

Although I am deeply saddened for her, I can't help feeling that Tina's situation has taught me a valuable lesson: that the

Jane Eyre technique of boyfriend-handling is not necessarily the most reliable method by which to hang on to your

boyfriend. I mean, the whole reason Dave dumped Tina is because she stopped calling him.

Except that, according to Grandmere, who did manage to hang onto a husband for forty years, the quickest way to turn

a guy off is to chase after him.

And certainly Lilly, who has the longest-running relationship of any of us, does not chase after Boris. Really, if anything,

he is the one doing the chasing. But that is probably because Lilly is too busy with her various lawsuits and projects to

pay much more than perfunctory attention to him.

Somewhere between the two of them - Grandmere and Lilly - must lie the truth to maintaining a successful relationship

with a man. Somehow I have got to get the hang of this, because I will tell you one thing: if I ever get a message from

Michael like the one Tina just got from Dave, I will fully be taking a swan dive off the Tappanzee Bridge. And I highly

doubt any cute coastguard officer is going to come along and fish me out - at least, not in one piece. The Tappanzee