Princesses, Inc.

by Mari Mancusi

  “I’m sorry I missed that one. . . .”

  “Well, it’s still online. You just have to click on the most watched—”

  She laughed, holding up a hand in my direction. “I think I’m good,” she said in a voice that sounded way too condescending for my liking. “And I’m very . . . pleased . . . to see one of my former students making something of his life. Even if it is”—she turned back to the screen and shuddered a little—“spicy green snot.”

  I groaned. Of all videos, she’d had to pick that one. “He also does stunts,” I protested. “And magic tricks. And he talks about . . . national important issue stuff too.”

  She gave me a vacant smile. I sighed.

  “Look, I just want to go and meet him,” I said. “That’s all.”

  The smile slipped from her face. She turned back to the laptop, clicking to return to the Comicpalooza website. I sat there, my stomach churning. As if I had been the one to stick wasabi up my nose.

  After what seemed an eternity, she turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”

  My heart dropped. For a moment I just sat there, hoping she was making a joke. A really horrible joke to torment me. But as the seconds ticked away, her expression didn’t change. And something sank in my chest.

  “Why not?” I demanded, once I’d found my voice. “It’s not even that far away. And it’s the first week of summer vacation—so it doesn’t interfere with school.”

  “It’s six hours away,” she corrected. “And a lot of money. Look. It’s three hundred dollars for a VIP pass to meet him and attend his little show. Plus we’d have to stay in a hotel—for two nights—which would easily add another three hundred, minimum. Then there’s gas to consider. A hundred bucks, easy.” She shook her head. “That’s a lot of money to spend on some kid who used to sleep through my class every day.”

  Oh my gosh! She got to see Collin Prince asleep? I nearly swooned at the thought, and it was all I could do not to demand complete, intricate intel on what his black lashes looked like, sweeping across his soft cheeks.

  But, sadly, these vitally important details would have to wait for the universe to restore itself and justice to be served. I drew in a breath, trying to focus. Trying to sound adult.

  “Look,” I said, “I know he’s just some random kid to you. But he’s kind of the most important thing in my life. If I don’t see him, I will pretty much die. And what will Dad say if he comes home to find a dead kid? I’m guessing that wouldn’t do wonders for your marriage, right?”

  She frowned, and I wondered if maybe I’d gone too far. After all, I knew it wasn’t exactly easy for my stepmother to single-parent two kids when my dad was away for extended periods of time—especially when one of those kids wasn’t even her own flesh and blood.

  My mother had died of breast cancer when I was just a baby, and for most of my growing-up life it had been just Dad and me. Which, for the record, suited me just fine. But Dad could never get over the feeling that I needed a female role model in my life, and when I turned ten he started getting more and more serious about the dating scene. A new wife for him, he’d say, and a new mom for me. When he found my stepmother, who also came with the added “bonus” of a stepsibling for his only child, he proposed.

  Of course, he’d had no idea at the time that his company would acquire a factory overseas that required long trips abroad. And I knew he felt horribly guilty on both ends—being forced to leave me and being forced to leave my stepmother stuck caring for me. To her credit, Nancy never complained. But sometimes she got this weird look in her eyes that told me this was not what she’d signed up for.

  Like right now, for instance.

  My stepmother sighed. “Sorry, kid. It’s just not in the budget. Maybe next year.” She started to rise to her feet. In desperation I grabbed her arm.

  “But there isn’t going to be a next year!” I protested, even while knowing I should just shut up right now and let it go. She clearly was not going to change her mind. And yet something inside me—some inner patheticism—compelled my mouth to keep moving. To keep begging. “It says right here: ‘this year only’! If we miss ‘this year only’ . . .”

  Tell her about the writing contest, a voice inside me nagged. But somehow the words got stuck in my throat. I’d never told her about my writing. And if I told her now, she’d want to read it. And what if she read it and thought it wasn’t any good? What if she told me I shouldn’t enter the contest—because I didn’t have a chance to win? Sure, my friends liked my fan fiction. But they would like anything that involved Collin Prince. Even snotty wasabi. My stepmom, on the other hand, was a teacher. She probably read good writing all the time.

  And while it was awful to be denied Comicpalooza on the account of money, it would be even worse if she told me I shouldn’t bother—because I was too terrible to even try.

  “I’m sorry, Hailey.” She gave me a frustrated look. “I’m not trying to be mean here. But with your dad away and me only substitute teaching . . . well, we don’t have a lot of extra money to blow on this kind of thing.”

  “What if I didn’t eat for three months? You could save the money you would normally spend on food.”

  She snorted. “Then your father would come home to a dead kid.”

  “I mean, I would eat something.” Seriously, why was she so determined to shoot down my every idea without even thinking it through? “Like ramen noodles. They’re super cheap. And peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” I gave her my best pleading look. “Please, Nancy. Don’t do this to me!”

  She rose to her feet, shaking off my hand. “I said no, Hailey. And I need you to respect my decision.”

  “Even if your decision stinks?”

  A shadow crossed her face. Uh-oh.

  “I think you need to go to your room,” she said in a quiet voice. “Until you’re able to calm down and reset that attitude.” She paused, her steely blue eyes locking onto me. “Or do you need me to call your father and wake him up in China to talk about it?”

  I slumped back in my chair, knowing I’d lost. Playing the dad card—well, that was her ace in the hole every time. “No, you don’t need to call Dad,” I muttered. “I’ll let you trample on my hopes and dreams without running up the long-distance bill. Which we clearly can’t afford to do.”

  She gave me a weary look. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said. “Someday when you get a job, you can choose what you want to spend your money on,” she told me. “But for now, you’re going to have to deal with the budget our family has made. And right now there’s no room in that budget for YouTube stars.”

  3

  “ ‘THERE’S NO ROOM IN THAT budget for YouTube stars,’ ” I mimicked in my most sarcastic voice as I stuck my finger down my throat, pretending to vomit. I paced the room, my steps eating up the distance between walls. I looked over at my friends. “Seriously, she always pretends to be this sweet, nice stepmother, rocking against the cliché. But clearly she has the evil gene deep down in her DNA, just waiting for the right moment to strike.” I made a face. “And of course she picks this moment. The worst possible moment ever.”

  Madison, Sarah, and Kalani gave me matching sympathetic looks from where they sat on Madison’s bed. We had gathered here together, as per usual, for our weekly Collin Prince fan club meeting. But we hadn’t even watched any of his new videos yet. We were all way too depressed.

  “My mom pretty much said the exact same thing,” Sarah said miserably. “I believe the phrase ‘waste of money’ came out of her mouth at one point.”

  “What is wrong with parents?” Kalani demanded. “It is literally not a waste of money. In fact, it’s a waste of life not to spend money on something so epic. I mean, when we die, are we going to remember food? Clothing? Shelter? No. We are going to remember the day we missed out on seeing Collin Prince—that’s what we’re going to remember.”

  “Totally,” Madison agreed. “My parents have
tons of money and they still said no. Something about being too busy to waste a weekend on some teenybopper fantasy—whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  I flopped down on Madison’s bed and stared up at her canopy. Her mother, a professional interior designer, had woven rustic brown branches around the poles, then added yellow LED lights, making it look like you were inside a magical fairy forest every time you lay down in bed. I always thought it was the coolest thing ever, even if it made Madison roll her eyes.

  However, today even twinkling lights couldn’t boost my bad mood. “I hate money,” I said with a sigh. “All it does is cause problems.”

  “I would be happy to have those kinds of problems,” Sarah said. “Seriously—I would be the best rich person ever, if someone would just give me a chance.”

  “I know, right?” I agreed. “I wouldn’t even mind working for it. The day I turn fourteen, I am joining the workforce and I am never looking back.”

  “You know, we could try to raise the money ourselves,” Sarah said suddenly, sitting up in bed.

  “How would we do that?” Kalani asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. We could . . . hold a bake sale?”

  “No offense, but I’ve tasted your cookies,” I said. “No one’s going to bite.”

  “True.” She pursed her lips. “Delivering newspapers, maybe? Like a . . . paper girl?”

  “Who gets newspapers delivered anymore? Everyone’s online.”

  She groaned. “Well, then, how much do you get for giving blood? Or . . . bone marrow? Isn’t that a thing?”

  “Hold on,” Madison interjected suddenly, sitting up in bed. “As much as I’d be willing and happy to donate bodily fluids to the Collin Prince cause, I just got a less . . . invasive idea.”

  We all turned to her expectantly.

  “We could babysit,” she said. “My sister babysits practically every weekend. She gets paid, like, ten dollars an hour to sit around and eat popcorn and watch bad movies.”

  “Whoa. My goal in life is to get paid to eat snacks and watch bad movies!” Kalani declared. “How does one get in on this babysitting action?”

  “Do you have to be fourteen?” Sarah asked doubtfully.

  “I don’t think there’s, like, a rule about it,” I mused.

  “But we can’t drive. How would we get to the jobs?”

  “We could walk to a lot of them,” I said. “Or ride our bikes. I mean, think of all the families in our subdivision alone—that’s a lot of potential jobs within walking distance.”

  “And I’m sure our parents will drive us to the ones that are farther out,” added Madison.

  “Or my brother could,” Kalani said. “He just got his license and is dying for an excuse to use the car.”

  “What about curfews? My mom would flip if I was out late on school nights,” Sarah pointed out.

  “Right, but a lot of moms need after-school care,” I reminded her. “And then we could still offer later nights on weekends—if we needed extra money.”

  “Let’s see. If each of us babysat six hours a week for the next two months . . .” Madison banged on her phone’s calculator. “At ten dollars an hour . . . for eight weeks . . .” She looked up. “That’s more than nineteen hundred dollars.”

  “We’d need twelve hundred for everyone to get a Collin Prince VIP pass,” I said, doing the math in my head. “And three hundred for two nights in a hotel—we can all cram into one room, right? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. And my stepmom estimated a hundred dollars in gas.”

  Kalani turned to Madison. “How much is that, oh mighty math ninja?”

  “Sixteen hundred,” she replied, without even using her calculator. Not that I was jealous or anything.

  “Which would leave us three hundred for food and souvenirs,” concluded Sarah. She looked up at us, a big grin spreading across her face. “Which would be more than enough!”

  We stared at one another, our eyes widening, for a moment unable to move. Could this actually work? Could we really make enough money on our own to finance the trip?

  Kalani moved first, leaping to her feet and bouncing on the bed excitedly. “We’re gonna meet Collin Prince!” she crowed. She bounded over to the poster Madison had hung on the wall and gave Collin a loud smacking kiss. “I am literally going to do that in person when I see you!” she promised his picture.

  I grabbed her hand and yanked her back down onto the bed. “First of all, I’m going to take a wild guess and say kissing privileges aren’t part of the VIP experience,” I said. “And second, you might want to hold off on launching into a full-on victory celebration just yet. We do actually have to earn this hypothetical money first.”

  “True,” Madison agreed. “Babysitting for six hours a week will only happen if we can find parents who want to hire us.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that.”

  We looked up, surprised. We’d been so involved in our calculations we hadn’t heard Madison’s older sister, Jordan, accompanied by my stepsister, Ginny, walk into the room. They surveyed us now, matching smug expressions on their faces.

  I scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  “Are you kidding me?” Ginny cried. “You think anyone’s going to hire you tools to watch their kids? You’ve barely graduated from having babysitters yourselves.”

  “We’re thirteen,” Madison shot back defensively. “According to US federal law we are totally legal to babysit.” She held out her phone to show off her Google research to prove it.

  Jordan and Ginny exchanged knowing looks. “Well, then,” Jordan said with a sniff. “I guess if it’s legal, that makes it all okay.”

  “Though good luck getting any jobs,” Ginny added with a snort.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” I demanded.

  She shrugged. “Please. We’ve got this neighborhood locked up tight. The parents know us. They love us. And you’ve got no way to compete with that except with inferior age and less experience.” She gave us a mean smile.

  “But hey—don’t let us stop you from trying,” Jordan chimed in. “By all means, put out some flyers. Post around the Web. I’m sure parents will be jumping to let a bunch of random kids they’ve never heard of take care of their precious brats.”

  I scowled back at her. I wanted to tell her she didn’t know what she was talking about, but at the same time I wasn’t sure she was wrong. Why would someone hire us over experienced, older babysitters like Ginny and Jordan? What did we have to offer that they didn’t already offer better?

  “Why do you even want to babysit so badly, anyway?” Jordan asked her sister. “After all, you’ve got your whole lives ahead of you to work. Why not enjoy your youth while you can? Go to the pool. The mall. The movies.”

  “But then we wouldn’t get to see Collin Prince,” Kalani protested.

  “Collin Prince?” Ginny shot Jordan a curious look before turning back to us. “Where are you going to see Collin Prince?”

  “Nowhere,” I said quickly, after shooting Kalani a warning look. The last thing we needed was to give these two more ammunition. “Now, if you’re finished, we’re actually kind of busy here. . . .”

  But, like it or not, we’d gotten their full attention now. Jordan grabbed the iPad off her sister’s bed and scanned the screen. She looked up at Ginny.

  “He’s going to be in Houston,” she said excitedly.

  Ginny peered over her shoulder at the iPad. “Comic-PAH-loser?” she read, squinting at the screen. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Just some nerd thing you wouldn’t understand,” I tried, working to wrestle the iPad back. But Jordan had a death grip and wouldn’t let go.

  “Collin Prince isn’t a nerd,” she pointed out. She turned to Ginny. “We should go to this.”

  Ugh. I cringed. It was the last thing I wanted to happen. Not to mention totally unfair. They didn’t even like geeky things. In fact, Ginny had pretty much made it her life’s mission to torment me over my Doct
or Who obsession and video game marathons.

  Of all people, they didn’t deserve to go to Comicpalooza. And they certainly didn’t deserve to meet Collin Prince.

  But unfortunately, they had one thing we didn’t have: cash to spend. And Jordan had a car, so really, two things. Two very important things. The two most important things, if we were being technical here.

  I sighed. I really didn’t want to do this. I really, really didn’t want to do this. But desperate times and all that. And if swallowing my pride meant an actual chance to see Collin Prince and enter the writing contest to boot, well, I’d choke it down without water and smile.

  “If you do go,” I said meekly, “can we come too?”

  Jordan burst out laughing. She looked at my friends and me, scorn radiating from her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding, right?” she asked incredulously. “You think we’d take you dorks out in public with us? To meet Collin Prince?” She turned to Ginny and snorted loudly. “Knowing them, they’d probably show up in costume.”

  “That’s not weird at Comicpalooza, actually,” Madison tried.

  “Like, literally, everyone will be in costume,” Kalani muttered under her breath.

  Jordan rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “Whatever. If you can somehow manage to save up enough money to go, then I suppose we can stomach you along for the ride. But you have to promise you will not try to hang out with us once we get there. Like, zero contact until it’s time to go home.”

  I nodded. Now that was a promise I’d have no problem keeping.

  “It’s a deal,” I told her. “And we will get the money. You just wait and see.”

  Ginny gave me a smirk. “I’ll be holding my breath,” she assured me. Then she turned to Jordan. “Let’s go. The reek of desperation is clogging my nasal passages.”

  And with that, the two of them sauntered out of the room. Madison leaped off the bed to slam the door behind them. She returned a moment later, looking extremely annoyed.

  “Sisters,” she muttered, glancing over at me.