Being a princess is hard work.

I just remembered: At lunch today Tina had a new book with her. It had a cover just like the last one, only this time the heroine was a brunette. This one was calledMy Secret Love, and it was about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with a rich boy who never notices her. Then the girl’s uncle kidnaps the boy and holds him for ransom, and she has to bathe his wounds and help him to escape and stuff, and of course he falls madly in love with her. Tina said she already read the end, and the girl gets to go and live with the rich boy’s parents after her uncle goes to jail and can no longer support her.

How come things like that don’t ever happen tome?

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 15, Homeroom

No Lilly again today. Lars suggested we’d make better time if we just drove straight to school and didn’t stop by her place every day. I guess he’s right.

It was really weird when we pulled up to Albert Einstein. All the people who normally hang around outside before school starts, smoking and sitting on Joe, the stone lion, were all clustered into these groups looking at something. I suppose somebody’s dad has been accused of money laundering again. Parents can be so self-centered: Before they do something illegal, they should totally stop and think about how their kids are going to feel if they get caught.

If I were Chelsea Clinton, I would change my name and move to Iceland.

I just walked right on by to show I wasn’t going to have any part in gossip. A bunch of people stared at me. I guess Michael’s right: It reallyhas gotten around, about me stabbing Lana with that Nutty Royale. Either that or my hair was sticking up in some weird way. But I checked in the mirror in the girls’ room and it wasn’t.

A bunch of girls ran out of the bathroom giggling like crazy when I went in, though.

Sometimes I wish I lived on a desert island. Really. With nobody else around for hundreds of miles. Just me, the ocean, the sand, and a coconut tree.

And maybe a high-definition 37-inch TV with a satellite dish and a Sony PlayStation with Bandicoot, for when I get bored.

 

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

 

1. The most commonly asked question at Albert Einstein High School is "Do you have any gum?" 2. Bees and bulls are attracted to the color red. 3. In my homeroom, it sometimes takes up to half an hour just to take attendance. 4. I miss being best friends with Lilly Moscovitz.

 

 

Later on Wednesday, Before Algebra

This totally weird thing happened. Josh Richter came up to his locker to put his Trig book away, and he said, "How you doin’?" to me as I was getting out my Algebra notebook.

I swear to God I am not making this up.

I was in such total shock, I nearly dropped my backpack. I don’t have any idea what I said to him. I think I said I was fine. Ihope I said I was fine.

Why is Josh Richter speaking to me?

It must have been another one of those synaptic breakdowns, like the one he had at Bigelows.

Then Josh slammed his locker closed,looked right down into my face —he’s really tall—and said, "See you later."

Then he walked away.

It took me five minutes to stop hyperventilating.

 

His eyes are so blue they hurt to look at.

 

 

 

Wednesday, Principal Gupta’s Office

It’s over.

I’m dead.

That’s it.

Now I know what everyone was looking at outside. I know why they were whispering and giggling. I know why those girls ran out of the bathroom. I know why Josh Richter talked to me.

My picture is on the cover of thePost.

That’s right. TheNew York Post. Read by millions of New Yorkers daily.

Oh, yeah. I’m dead.

It’s a pretty good picture of me, actually. I guess somebody took it as I was leaving the Plaza Sunday night, after dinner with Grandmère and my dad. I’m going down the steps just outside the revolving door. I’m sort of smiling, only not at the camera. I don’t remember anybody taking my picture, but I guess somebody did.

Superimposed over the photo are the wordsPrincess Amelia, and then in smaller lettersNew York’s Very Own Royal.

Great. Just great.

Mr. Gianini was the one who figured it out. He said he was walking to catch the subway to work and he saw it on the newsstand. He called my mother. My mom was taking a shower, though, and didn’t hear the phone. Mr. G left a message. But my mom never checks the machine in the morning, because everyone who knows her knows she is not a morning person, so nobody ever calls before noon. When Mr. G called again, she had already left for her studio, where she never answers the phone, because she wears a Walkman when she paints, so she can listen to Howard Stern.

So then Mr. G had no choice but to call my dad at the Plaza, which was pretty nervy of him, if you think about it. According to Mr. G, my dad blew a gasket. He told Mr. G that until he could get there, I should be sent to the principal’s office, where I would be "safe."

My dad has obviously never met Principal Gupta.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. She hasn’t been so bad. She showed me the paper and said, kind of sarcastically, but in a nice way, "You might have shared this with me, Mia, when I asked you the other day if everything was all right at home."

I blushed. "Well," I said, "I didn’t think anybody would believe me."

"It is," Principal Gupta said, "a bit unbelievable."

That’s what the story on page 2 of thePost said, too.FAIRY TALE COMES TRUE FOR ONE LUCKY NEW YORK KID was how the reporter, one Ms. Carol Fernandez, put it. Like I had won the lottery, or something. Like I should behappy about it.

Ms. Carol Fernandez went on at length about my mom, "the raven-haired avant-garde painter Helen Thermopolis," and about my dad, "the handsome Prince Phillipe of Genovia," who’d "successfully battled his way back from a bout of testicular cancer." Oh, thanks, Carol Fernandez, for letting all of New York know my dad’s only got one you-know-what.

Then she went on to describe me as "the statuesque beauty who is the product of Helen and Phillipe’s tempestuous whirlwind college romance."

HELLO??? CAROL FERNANDEZ, ARE YOU ON CRACK????

I am NOT a statuesque beauty. Yeah, I’m TALL. I’m way TALL. But I am no beauty. I want what Carol Fernandez has been smoking, if she thinksI’M beautiful.

No wonder everybody was laughing at me. This is SO embarrassing. I mean, really.

Oh, here comes my dad. Boy, doeshe look mad. . . . 

 

 

 

More Wednesday, English

It isn’t fair.

This is totally, completely unfair.

I mean, anybody else’s dad would have let them come home. Anybody else’s dad, if his kid’s picture was on the front of thePost, would say, "Maybe you should skip school for a few days until things calm down."

Anybody else’s dad would have been like, "Maybe you should change schools. How do you feel about Iowa? Would you like to go to school in Iowa?"

But oh, no. Notmy dad. Becausehe’s a prince. And he says members of the royal family of Genovia do not "go home" when there is a crisis. No, they stay where they are and slug it out.

Slug it out. I think my dad has something in common with Carol Fernandez: They’re BOTH on crack.

Then my dad reminded me that it’s not like I’m not getting paid for this. Right! One hundred lousy bucks! One hundred lousy bucks a day to be publicly ridiculed and humiliated.

Those baby seals better be grateful, that’s all I have to say.

So here I am in English, and everybody is whispering about me and pointing at me like I’m a victim of alien abduction or something, and my dad expects me to sit here and let them, because I’m a princess and that’s what princesses do.

But these kids arebrutal.

I tried to tell my dad that. I was like, "Dad, you don’t understand. They’re all laughing at me."

And all he said was, "I’m sorry, honey. You’re just going to have to tough it out. You knew this was going to happen eventually. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be quite this soon, but it’s probably just as well to get it over with. . . . "

Um, hello? I didnot know this was going to happen eventually. I thought I was going to be able to keep this whole princess thing a secret. My lovely plan about only being a princess in Genovia is falling apart. I have to be a princess right here in Manhattan, and believe me, that is no picnic.

I was so mad at my dad for telling me I had to go back to class, I accused him of having ratted me out to Carol Fernandez himself.

He got all offended. "Me?I don’t know any Carol Fernandez." He shot this funny look at Mr. Gianini, who was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking all concerned.

"What?" Mr. G said, going from concerned to surprised real fast. "Me?I’d never evenheard of Genovia until this morning."

"Geez, Dad," I said. "Don’t blame Mr. G.He had nothing to do with it."

My dad didn’t look very convinced. "Well,somebody leaked the story to the press. . . . " He said it in this mean way, too. You could totally tell he thought Mr. G had done it. But it couldn’t have been Mr. Gianini. Carol Fernandez wrote about stuff in her story that there’s no way Mr. G could know, because evenMom doesn’t know about it. Like how Miragnac has a private airstrip. I never told her about that.