Which was totally sweet of him.

But when your life is crumbling around you, the last place in the world you want to be is school…no matter how many cute guys there say they miss you.

Wednesday, September 15, 8 a.m., the loft

Mom came bursting in here this morning, her mouth practically invisible, she had her lips pressed together so tightly. She said she gets that I’m sad. She said that she gets that I feel like there’s no point in living because my boyfriend dumped me, my best friend isn’t speaking to me, and I have no choice over what career I’m going to have someday. She says she gets that my palms won’t stop sweating, I have heart palpitations, and my tongue is a funny color.

But then she said that three days of wallowing is her limit. She said I was getting up and getting dressed and going to school if she had to drag me to the shower and stick me under the nozzle herself.

I just stayed exactly where I’ve been for the past seventy-two hours—my bed—and looked at her without saying anything. I couldn’t believe she could be so cold. I mean, really.

Then she tried a different tactic. She started to cry. She said she’s really worried about me and that she doesn’t know what to do. She says she’s never seen me this way—that I didn’t even do anything the other day when Rocky tried to stick a dime up his nose. She said a week ago I’d have been freaking out over loose change around the house being a choking hazard.

Now I didn’t even care.

Which isn’t true. Idon’t want Rocky to choke. And Idon’t want to make my mother cry.

But at the same time, I don’t see what I can do to keep either of these things from happening.

Then Mom switched tack again, and stopped crying, and asked if I wanted her to bring out the big guns. She said that she doesn’t want to bother Dad while he’s busy with the United Nations General Assembly, but that I really wasn’t leaving her much choice. Was that what I wanted her to do? To bother my dad with this?

I told her she could call Dad if she wanted to. I told her that I’d been meaning to talk to Dad anyway about moving to Genovia full time. Because the truth is, I don’t want to live in Manhattan anymore.

All I wanted was for Mom to leave me alone so I could continue feeling sorry for myself in peace. My plan actually worked…a littletoo well. She got so upset, she ran out of my room and started crying again.

I really didn’t mean to make her cry! I’m sorry to have made her feel bad. Especially because I don’t really want to move to Genovia. I’m sure they won’t let me lounge around in bed all day there. Which I’m really sort of starting to like doing. I have a whole little schedule now. Every morning, I get up before anyone else does and have breakfast—usually whatever leftovers are in the fridge from the evening meal the night before—and feed Fat Louie and clean out his box.

Then I get back into bed, and eventually Fat Louie joins me, and together we watch the top ten video countdown on MTV, and then the one on VH1. When either Mom or Mr. G comes in and tries to get me to go to school, I say no…which usually exhausts me so much, I have to take a little nap.

Then I wake up in time to watchThe View and two back-to-back episodes ofJudging Amy.

After I make sure no one else is around, I go out into the kitchen and have some lunch—a ham sandwich or microwave popcorn or something. It doesn’t matter much what—and then get back into bed with Fat Louie and watch Judge Milian onThe People’s Court , and thenJudge Judy.

Then my mom sends in Tina, and I pretend to be alive, and then Tina leaves, and I go to sleep, because Tina exhausts me. Then, after Mom and everybody is asleep, I get up, make myself a snack, and watch TV until two or three in the morning.

Then I get up a few hours later and do it all over again, after I realize I wasn’t dreaming, and I really am truly broken up with Michael.

I could conceivably keep this up until I’m eighteen, and start receiving my yearly salary as Princess of Genovia (which doesn’t kick in until I’m a legal adult and begin my official duties as heir).

And, okay, it’s going to be hard to do my official duties from bed.

But I bet I could figure out a way.

Still. It sucks to make your mother cry. Maybe I should make her a card or something.

Except that would involve getting out of bed to look for markers and stuff. And I am way, way too tired to do all of that.

Wednesday, September 15, 5 p.m., the loft

I guess my mom wasn’t kidding about bringing out the big guns. Tina didn’t show up after school today.

Grandmèredid.

But—much as I love her, and sorry as I am to have made her cry—Mom’s totally wrong if she thinks anything Grandmère says or does is going to change my mind about going back to school.

I’m not doing it. There’s just no point.

“What do you mean, there’s no point?” Grandmère wanted to know, when I said this. “Of course there’s a point. You have tolearn .”

“Why?” I asked her. “My future job is totally assured. Throughout the ages, most reigning monarchs have been total morons, and yet they still were allowed to rule. What difference does it make whether I’ve graduated from high school or not?”

“Well, you don’t want to be an ignoramus,” Grandmère insisted. She was perched on the very edge of my bed, holding her purse in her lap and looking around all askance at everything, like the homework assignments Tina had left the day before and which I’d sort of thrown across the floor, and myBuffy the Vampire Slayer action figures, apparently not realizing they are expensive collectibles now, like her stupid Limoges teacups.

But from Grandmère’s expression, you could tell that, instead of being in her teenage granddaughter’s bedroom, she felt like she was in some back alley pawnshop in Chinatown, or something.

And okay, I guess itis pretty messy in here. But whatever.

“Why don’t I want to be an ignoramus?” I asked. “Some of the most influential women on the planet didn’t graduate from high school either.”

“Name one,” Grandmère demanded, with a snort.

“Paris Hilton,” I said. “Lindsay Lohan. Nicole Richie.”

“I am quite certain,” Grandmère said, “that all of those women graduated from high school. And even if they didn’t, it’s nothing to be proud of. Ignorance is never attractive. Speaking of which, how long has it been since you washed your hair, Amelia?”

I fail to see the point in bathing. What does it matter how I look now that Michael is out of my life?

When I mentioned this, however, Grandmère asked if I was feeling all right.

“No, I’m not, Grandmère,” I said. “Which I would have thought was obvious by the fact that I haven’t gotten out of my bed in four days except to eat and go to the bathroom.”

“Oh, Amelia,” Grandmère said, looking offended. “We’ve stooped to scatological references now, as well?Really. I understand you’re sad about losing That Boy, but—”

“Grandmère,” I said. “I think you’d better go now.”

“I won’t go until we’ve decided what we’re going to do aboutthis .”

And then Grandmère tapped on the Domina Rei stationery from Mrs. Weinberger, which she’d found peeping out from beneath my bed.

“Oh, that,” I said. “Please have your secretary decline for me.”

“Decline?” Grandmère’s drawn-on eyebrows lifted. “We shall do no such thing, young lady. Do you have any idea what Elana Trevanni said when I ran into her at Bergdorf’s yesterday and casually mentioned to her that my granddaughter had been invited to speak at the Domina Rei charity gala? She said—”

“Fine,” I interrupted again. “I’ll do it.”

Grandmère didn’t say anything for a beat. Then she asked hesitantly, “Did you just say you’ll do it, Amelia?”

“Yes,” I said. Anything to make her go away. “I’ll do it. Just…can we talk about it later? I have a headache.”

“You’re probably dehydrated,” Grandmère said. “Have you drunk your eight glasses of water today? You know you need to drink eight glasses of water a day, Amelia, in order to keep hydrated. That’s how we Renaldo women preserve our dewy complexions, by consuming plenty of liquids…”

“I think I just need to rest,” I said in a weak voice. “My throat is starting to hurt a little. I don’t want to get laryngitis and lose my voice before the big event…it’s a week from Friday, right?”

“Good heavens,” Grandmère said, leaping up from my bed so quickly that she startled Fat Louie from the pillow fort I’d made him at my side. He was nothing but an orange blur as he ran for the safety of the closet. “We can’t have you coming down with something that might endanger your attending the gala! I shall send over my personal physician immediately!”

She started fumbling in her purse for her bejeweled cell phone—which she only knows how to work because I showed her about a million times—but I stopped her by saying weakly, “No, it’s all right, Grandmère. I think I just need to rest…you’d better go. Whatever I have, you don’t want to catch it….”

Grandmère was out of there like a shot.

And FINALLY I could go back to sleep.

Or so I thought. Because a few minutes later, Mom came into the doorway and stood there peering down at me with a troubled look on her face.

“Mia,” she said. “Did you tell your grandmother you’d speak at a Domina Rei Women’s Society benefit?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling my pillow over my head. “Anything, to make her leave.”

Mom went away, looking concerned.

I don’t know what SHE’S so worried about.I’m the one who’s going to have to find some way to get out of town before the event actually happens.

Thursday, September 16, 11 a.m., Dad’s limo

This morning at nine o’clock I was in bed with my eyes squeezed shut (because I heard someone coming and I didn’t want to deal) when my covers were thrown back and this stern, deep voice said, “Get. Up.”

I opened my eyes and was surprised to see my dad standing there, wearing his business suit and smelling of autumn.

I’ve been inside so long, I’ve forgotten what outside smells like.

I could tell by his expression that I was in for it.

So I said, “No,” and snatched the covers back, pulling them over my head.

Which is when I heard my dad go, “Lars. If you will.”

And then my bodyguard scooped me—covers still clutched over my head—from my bed, and began to carry me from my mother’s apartment.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, when I had disentangled my head from the covers, and saw that we were in the hallway, and that Ronnie, our neighbor from next door, was blinking at us in astonishment with her arms full of grocery bags.

“Something that’s for your own good,” my dad said, from behind Lars, on the stairs.

“But—” I seriously couldn’t believe this. “I’m in my pajamas!”

“I told you to get up,” Dad said. “You’re the one who wouldn’t do it.”

“You can’t do this to me!” I cried, as we exited the apartment building and headed toward my dad’s limo. “I’m an American! I have rights, you know!”

My dad looked at me and said very sarcastically, “No, you don’t. You’re a teenager.”

“Help!” I screamed to all the New York University students who live in our neighborhood and were just rolling home after a fun night out in the East Village. “Call Amnesty International! I’m being held against my will!”

“Lars,” my dad said disgustedly as the NYU kids looked around for the movie cameras they evidently thought were rolling, since the whole thing appeared to be some scene from aLaw and Order episode being filmed on Thompson Street, or something. “Toss her in the car.”

And Lars did! He tossed me in the car!

And okay, he tossed my journal in after me. And a pen.

And my Chinese slippers with the sequin flowers on the toes.

But still! Is this any way to treat a princess, I ask you? Or even a human being?

And Dad won’t even tell me where we’re going. He just goes, “You’ll see,” when I ask.

After getting over the initial shock of being manhandled in such a way, I find, to my surprise, that I don’t much care. I mean, it’s weird to be sitting in my dad’s limo in my Hello Kitty pajamas, with my sheet and duvet wrapped around me.

But at the same time, I can’t summon up any real indignation about it.

I think that might actually be the problem. That I just don’t care aboutanything anymore.

Except I can’t even be bothered to care aboutthat very much, either.

Thursday, September 16, noon, Dr. Knutz’s office

We’re sitting in apsychologist’s office.