Princess In Love (9 page)

Actually, it was kind of hard to choose my dress for my first big televised event because, surprisingly, Sebastiano turns out to be a pretty good designer. There were several dresses I actually wouldn't be embarrassed to be caught dead in.

Oops. Slip of the tongue. I wonder, though, if Sebastiano really does want to kill me.

He seems to like being a fashion designer, which he couldn't do if he were Prince of Genovia: he'd be too busy turning bills

into law and stuff like that.

Still, you can tell he'd totally enjoy wearing a crown. Not that, as ruler of Genovia he'd ever get to do this. I've  never seen

my dad in a crown. Just suits, mainly Armani.

And shorts when he plays racquetball with other world leaders.

Ew, I wonder if I will have to learn to play racquetball.

But if Sebastiano became prince of Genovia, he would totally wear a crown all the time. He told me nothing brings out the sparkles in someone's eyes like pear-shaped diamonds. He prefers Tiffany's. Or as he calls it, Tiff's.

Since we were getting so chummy and all, I told Sebastiano about the Non-Denominational Winter Dance and how I have nothing to wear to it. Sebastiano seemed disappointed when he learned I would not be wearing a tiara to my school dance,

but he got over it and started asking me all these questions about the event. Like 'Who do you go with?' and 'What he look like?' and stuff like that.

I don't know what it was, but I found myself actually telling Sebastiano all about my love life. It was so weird. I totally didn't want to, but it all just started spilling out. Thank God Grandmere wasn't there . . . she'd gone off in search of more cigarettes and to have her Sidecar refreshed.

I told Sebastiano all about Kenny and how he loves me but I don't love him, and how I actually like someone else but he doesn't know I'm alive.

Sebastiano is really quite a good listener. I don't know how much, if anything, he understood about what I said, but he didn't take his eyes off my reflection as I talked, and when I was done he looked me up and down in the mirror and just said one thing: 'This boy you like. How you know he no like you back?'

'Because,' I said. 'He likes this other girl.'

Sebastiano made an impatient motion with his hands. The gesture was made more dramatic by the fact that he was wearing sleeves with these big frilly lace cuffs.

'No, no, no, no, no,' he said. 'He help you with your Al home. He like you or he no do that. Why he do that if he no like you?'

I thought for a minute about why Michael had always been so willing to do that. Help me with my Algebra, I mean. I guess just because I am his sister's best friend and he isn't the type of person who can sit around and watch his sister's best friend flunk out of high school without, you know, at least trying to do something about it.

While I was thinking about that, I couldn't help remembering how Michael's knees, beneath our desks, sometimes brush against mine as he's telling me about integers. Or how sometimes he leans so close to correct something I've written wrong that I can smell the nice, clean scent of his soap. Or how sometimes, like when I do my Lana Weinberger imitation or whatever, he throws back his head and laughs. Michael's lips look extra nice when he is smiling. 'Tell Sebastiano,' Sebastiano urged me. 'Tell Sebastiano why this boy helps you if he no like you.'

I sighed. 'Because I'm his little sister's best friend,' I said sadly. Really, could there be anything more humiliating? I mean, clearly Michael has never been impressed with my keen intellect or ravishing good looks, given my low grade point average and of course my gigantism.

Sebastiano tugged on my sleeve and went, 'You no worry. I make dress for dance. This boy, he no think of you as little sister's best friend.'

Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Why must all my relatives be so weird?

Anyway, we picked out what I'm going to wear for my introduction on Genovian national TV. It's this white taffeta job with a huge poofy skirt and this light-blue sash (the royal colours are blue and white). But Sebastiano had one of his assistants take photos of me in all the dresses so I can see how I look in them and then decide. I thought this was fairly professional for a guy who calls breakfast 'breck'.

But all that isn't what I want to write about although I'm so tired I hardly know what I'm doing. What I want to write about is what happened today after Algebra review.

Which was that Mr.Gianini, after everyone but me had left, went, 'Mia, I heard a rumour that there was supposed to be some kind of student walkout today. Had you heard that?'

Me:
(Freezing in my seat)
Um, no.

Mr Gianini:
Oh. So you wouldn't know then if somebody -maybe in protest at the protest - direw the second-floor

fire alarm? The one by the drinking fountain?

Me:
(Wishing Lars would stop coughing suggestively)
Um, no.

Mr Gianini:
That's what I thought. Because you know the penalty for pulling one of the fire alarms — when there is,

in fact, no sign of a fire - is expulsion.

Me:
Oh, yes. I know that.

Mr Gianini:
I thought you might have seen who did it, since I believe I gave you a hall pass shortly before the alarm went off.

Me:
Oh, no. I didn't see anybody.

Except Justin Baxendale, and his smoky eyelashes. But I didn't say that.

Mr Gianini:
I didn't think so. Oh, well. If you ever hear who did it, maybe you could tell her from me never to do it again.

Me:
Um. OK.

Mr. Gianini:
And tell her thanks from me too. The last thing we need right now, with tensions running so high over Finals, is a student walkout.

(Mr. Gianini picked up his briefcase and jacket.)
See you at home.

Then he winked at me. WINKED at me, like he knew I was the one who'd done it. But he couldn't know. I mean, he doesn't know about my nostrils (which were fully flaring the whole time; I could feel them!) Right? RIGHT????

Thursday; December 10, Homeroom

Lilly is going to drive me crazy.

Seriously. Like it's not enough I have Finals and my introduction to Genovia and my love life and everything to worry about. I have to listen to Lilly complain about how the administration of Albert Einstein High is out to get her. The whole way to school this morning she just droned on and on about how it's all a plot to silence her because she once complained about the Coke machine outside the gym. Apparently, the Coke machine is indicative of the administration's efforts to turn us all into mindless soda-drinking, Gap-wearing clones.

If you ask me, this isn't really about Coke, or the attempts by the school's administration to turn us into mindless pod-people. It's really just because Lilly's still mad she can't use a chapter of the book she's writing on the teen experience as her term paper.

I told Lilly if she doesn't submit a new topic, she's going to get an F as her nine-week grade. Factored in with her A for the

last nine weeks, that's only like a C, which will significantly lower her grade point average and put her chances of getting into Berkeley, which is her first-choice school, at risk. She may be forced to fall back on her safety school, Brown, which I know would be quite a blow.

She didn't even listen to me. She says she's having an organizational meeting of this new group (of which she is president) Students Against the Corporatization of Albert Einstein High School (SACAEHS) on Saturday, and I have to come because

I am the group's secretary. Don't ask me how that happened. Lilly says I write everything down anyway so it shouldn't be any trouble for me.

I wish Michael had been there to defend me from his sister but, like he has every day this week, he took the subway to school early so he can work on his project for the Winter Carnival.

I wouldn't doubt Judith Gershner has been showing up at school on the early side too, this week.

Speaking of Michael, I picked up another greeting card, this one from the Plaza gift shop, on the way to Sebastiano's showroom last night. It's a lot better than that stupid one with the strawberry. This one has a picture of a lady holding a finger

to her lips. Inside it says, Shhhh . . .

Under that, I am having Tina write:

Roses are red

But cherries are redder

Maybe she can clone fruit flies

But I like you better.

What I meant was that I like him more than Judith Gershner does, but I'm not really sure that comes through in the poem. Tina says it does, but Tina thinks I should have used love instead of like, so who knows if her opinion is of any value? This is a

poem clearly calling for a like and not a love.

I should know. I write enough of them.

Poems, I mean.

English Journal

This semester we have read several novels, including
To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter.

In your English journal please record your feelings about the books we have read, and books in general. What have been your most meaningful experiences as a reader? Your favourite books? Your host favourite?

Please utilize transitive sentences.

Books I Have Read, and

What They Meant to Me

by Mia Thermopolis

Books That Were Good

1.
Jaws — I
bet you didn't know that in the book version of this, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider's wife have sex. But they do.

2.
The Catcher in the Rye — This is totally good. It has lots of bad words.

3.
To Kill a Mockingbird — This is an excellent book. They should do a movie version of this with Mel Gibson as Atticus, and he should blow Mr. Ewell away with a flame thrower at the end.

4.
A Wrinkle in Time - Only we never find out the most important thing: whether or not Meg has breasts. I'm thinking she probably did, considering the fact that she already had the glasses and braces. I mean, all of that and flat-chested too? God wouldn't be so cruel.

5.
Emanuelle - In the eighth grade, my best friend and I found this book on top of a rubbish bin on East Third Street. We took turns reading it out loud. It was very, very good. At least the parts I remember. My mom caught us reading

it and took it away before we'd gotten a chance to finish it.

Books That Sucked
*

1.
The Scarlet Letter - You know what would have been cool? If there had been a rift in the space-time continuum and one of those Euro-trash terrorists Bruce Willis is always chasing in the Die Hard movies dropped a nuclear bomb on

the town where Arthur Dimmesdale and all those losers lived, and blew it sky high. That's about the only thing I can think of that would have made this book even remotely interesting.

2.
Our Town - OK, this is a play and not a book, but they still made us read it and all I have to say about it is that, basically, you find out when you die that nobody cared about you and we're all alone for ever, the end. OK! Thanks

for that! I feel much better now!

3.
The Mill on the Floss — I don't want to give anything away here, but midway through the book, just when things were going good and there were all these hot romances (not as hot as in Emanuelle, though, so don't get your hopes up), someone very crucial to the plot DIES, which if you ask me is just a cop-out so the author could make her deadline on time.

4.
Anne of Green Gables -All that blah-blah-blah about imagination. I tried to imagine some car chases or explosions that would actually make this book good, but I must be like all of Anne's drippy unimaginative friends, because I couldn't.

5.
Little House on the Prairie - Little yawn on the big snore. I have all ninety-seven thousand of these books because people kept on giving them to me when I was little and all I have to say is if Half Pint had lived in Manhattan,, she'd have gotten her you-know-what kicked from here to Avenue D.

* Mrs Spears, I believe the word 'sucked' is transitive in this instance.

Thursday, December 10, Fourth Period

No PE today!

Instead there is an Assembly.

And it's not because there's a sporting event they want us all to show our support for. No! This is no pep rally. There isn't a cheerleader in sight. Well, OK, there are cheerleaders in sight, but they aren't in uniform or anything. They are sitting in the bleachers with the rest of us. Well, not really with the rest of us since they are in the best seats, the ones in the middle, all jostling to see who can sit next to Justin Baxendale, who has apparently ousted Josh Richter as hottest guy in school, but whatever.

No. Instead, it appears that there has been a major disciplinary infraction at Albert Einstein High School. An act of random vandalism that has shaken the administration's faith in us. Which is why they called an Assembly, so that they could better convey their feelings of - as Lilly just whispered in my ear - disillusionment and betrayal.

And what was this act that has Principal Gupta and the trustees so up in arms?

Why, someone pulled a fire alarm yesterday, that's what.

Oops.

I have to say, I have never done anything really bad before — well, I dropped an eggplant out of a fifteenth-floor window a couple of months ago, but no one got hurt or anything — but there really is something sort of thrilling about it. I mean, I would never want to do anything too bad - like anything where someone might get hurt.

But I have to say, it is immensely gratifying to have all these people coming up to the microphone and decrying my behaviour.

I probably wouldn't feel so good about it if I'd gotten caught, though.

I am being urged to come forward and turn myself in even as I write this. Apparently, the guilt for my action is going to hound me well past my teen years - possibly even into my twenties and beyond.

OK, can I just tell you how much I'm NOT going to think about high school when I am in my twenties? I am going to be way too busy working with Greenpeace to save the whales to worry about some stupid fire alarm I pulled in the ninth grade.