Princesses, Inc.

by Mari Mancusi

  “Stepsisters,” I agreed. I guess I could be grateful at least mine wasn’t a blood relative.

  “They’re just jealous,” Sarah declared. “They know in their hearts that at thirteen we’re already way cooler than they’ll ever be.”

  “Imagine how stupid they’re going to look at Comicpalooza,” Kalani scoffed. “They are going to stick out like sore thumbs.”

  “Sore thumbs with money,” I pointed out dismally. “And unfortunately, they’re not wrong about the babysitting thing. How are we going to get anyone to hire us? We’ve got nothing to offer to make parents pick us instead of them.”

  “Which is so not fair.” Madison lay back on her bed, staring up at the fairy canopy. “Why should they get all the good babysitting jobs just ’cause they’re older? Age doesn’t make you a good babysitter.”

  “Right? All Ginny used to do when she babysat me was sit me in front of the TV while she texted her boyfriend all night,” I said. “I bet she does the same thing now. Doesn’t even play with the kids.”

  “I would totally play with the kids if I was babysitting.” Kalani screwed up her face in disgust. “That’s literally what you’re getting paid to do, right?”

  “Exactly,” Madison agreed. “Well, that and keep the kids safe and all. But we could do that, too. Like playing games and keeping your kids safe—two services for the price of one!” She shrugged. “Not that we could probably put that on the flyer or anything.”

  Sarah sighed. “I used to have the best babysitter ever,” she remembered. “She would bring over all these amazing costumes. For both of us. And we’d play all these crazy made-up games, like Princess in the Castle, until it was time for me to go to bed. I always thought if I became a babysitter someday, I’d want to be just like her.”

  “She sounds amazing,” I said.

  “She was. In fact, she was so amazing she ended up starting her own princess party company to help fund her college tuition.”

  “What’s a princess party company?” Kalani asked.

  “It’s like, if your kid loves Cinderella, you pay this company and they send over a Cinderella for their birthday—all dressed up and in character—to entertain the kids,” Sarah explained. “Usually they have games and sing-alongs and they help cut the cake. It’s pretty awesome. My younger cousin had a princess party when she turned four. Let’s just say the kids were freaking out when a certain snow queen let it go, right there in the middle of the living room.”

  She grabbed the iPad and pulled up a website. We leaned in to check it out. Sure enough, there were all these pictures of girls who looked just like princesses, playing with groups of excited kids. It looked super fun. And getting paid to dress up in costume? That was even cooler than the free-snacks-and-watching-TV thing.

  And then . . . suddenly I got an idea.

  A really awesome idea.

  A really awesome, totally doable idea . . .

  I looked up at my friends, my heart pounding in my chest with excitement. This could be the competitive edge we were looking for. The thing that set us apart from the Ginnys and Jordans of the world. The niche that would make parents want to hire us over any other babysitters. Because we wouldn’t be like the other boring old babysitters.

  Or, at the very least, we wouldn’t look like them.

  “We could totally do this!” I burst out.

  “What?” My friends glanced over at me, confused looks on their faces.

  “You want us to start a princess party company?” asked Madison.

  “No.” I shook my head, a smile stretching across my face. “I want to start a princess babysitting company.”

  4

  MY FRIENDS ALL STARED AT me. I grinned widely.

  “We need a competitive edge, right? Over the other babysitters in the neighborhood?” I explained. “After all, they’re older. They’re more experienced. So of course parents are going to choose them over us. Unless . . .” I ran over to Madison’s closet and whipped it open. “We give them . . .” I shuffled through some of the clothes, then frowned. “Um, Madison? Do you even own a dress?”

  She jumped off the bed and pushed her way to the very back of her closet until all I could see were her tennis shoes, sticking out. “I think . . . there . . . might be . . . one . . . here . . . somewhere. . . .” She grunted and pushed farther back until she disappeared from sight. (Seriously, did she have Narnia stashed back there?) Kalani and Sarah looked at me skeptically as I proceeded to lose all my momentum.

  “Aha!” Madison cried triumphantly. She emerged from the closet with an atrocious-looking straggly pink thing on a hanger. It was sparkly. It was fur-trimmed. And it was so un-Madison that we all burst out laughing. She frowned at us, shoving the dress in my direction.

  “What?” she growled. “My aunt still thinks I’m six, okay?”

  I was pretty sure even a six-year-old would barf at this particular frothy, frilly monstrosity, but it would have to do. I held up the dress in front of me, then turned to my friends, pasting a huge smile on my face.

  “Hi, kids! I’m Princess Hailey—so great to meet you! I’ve come all the way from my kingdom in the clouds to play with you tonight. Isn’t that so exciting? Aren’t I so much cooler than all those boring old babysitters your mother usually sticks you with?” I took a step forward, reaching out my hand . . .

  “Mommy! Don’t leave me with the furry pink monster!” Kalani screamed. “I think she’s going to eat me!” She play-cowered behind Sarah and then burst out laughing.

  I rolled my eyes, tossing the sorry excuse for a dress back into the closet. “Okay, fine. Clearly we’d need to up our costume game.”

  “And work on less creepy meet-and-greets,” Sarah added dryly.

  “Yes, yes,” I agreed. “But think about the big picture here. Think about what an amazing hook this will be. We show up to all our babysitting gigs dressed as beautiful princesses and totally in character, too. As far as the little kids know, we’re the real deal, coming to spend a magical evening with them. It’ll be just like the princesses who do the parties—same games and all that—but for one or two special little kids each night. They will totally love it!”

  “And the parents will love it too,” Sarah said thoughtfully, nodding her head. “They pay big bucks for those princess parties. So this could be, like, a big savings. A princess for the price of a babysitter.”

  “Yeah, but shouldn’t we charge extra?” Madison asked. “We would be going through a lot more trouble than if we just showed up in jeans and a T-shirt. We’re talking extreme makeover anytime we have a gig.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “We charge exactly the same. Then they can’t use the idea of trying to save money as an excuse not to hire us. They can either have someone boring like Jordan or Ginny. Or, for the exact same price, they can have us!”

  “What about boys?” Sarah asked. “Are we limiting ourselves to the girl market here?”

  “Some boys like princesses,” Kalani pointed out. “I saw this thing online where a boy wanted to be Elsa for Halloween and his dad totally let him do it. He rocked that dress, too, I might add.”

  “Yeah, but most boys aren’t like that,” Madison interjected. “And not all girls like princesses, either. When I was four and my parents tried to force Snow White on me at Disney World, I kicked her so hard I left a bruise.” She grinned, remembering. “That was when they finally gave in and took me to Pirates of the Caribbean. I even got a pirate makeover!”

  She hopped off her bed, dashed to her dresser, and grabbed a pirate hat that had been hanging from the mirror. She tossed it on her head and turned to face us, a fierce snarl on her face.

  “Arrr . . . me mateys! Any of you scallywags be wantin’ to walk the plank?”

  “Only if young Johnny Depp is at the end of it,” Sarah muttered.

  My eyes widened. “That’s perfect!” I cried. “We could totally do that.”

  “Make young Johnny Depp walk the plank?” Kalani asked, confused.
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  “That, unfortunately, may be beyond even our powers,” I said. “But we could create a babysitting company featuring princesses and pirates. It could be, like, kids’ choice.”

  My friends looked at one another, nodding thoughtfully.

  “I like it,” Sarah said.

  “It could totally work,” agreed Kalani.

  “And we could call the company Princesses and Pirates . . . Incorporated,” Madison finished. “It has a nice ring to it.”

  I felt a grin spreading across my face. It did have a nice ring to it. The kind of ring that would hopefully make the phone ring with tons of babysitting jobs.

  “Just think,” I said. “We’d get to do something we already all love—cosplay—and we’d get to make money from it at the same time! It’s perfect!”

  “It is more than perfect!” Kalani crowed. She held up her hands, inviting more of her famous high fives. This time none of us held back. “It’s literally the best idea ever.”

  And it kind of was, I thought as I slapped my hand against my friends’. We could rock this new company. We could line up babysitting gigs all spring long. We could make money hand over fist.

  And come summer vacation, we could hit the road. To see our Prince at last.

  I so needed to start working on my new writing project if I was going to be ready.

  5

  IS YOUR KID BORED OF BABYSITTERS?

  Do they beg you not to leave the house?

  Do they cry when you head out the door?

  What if next time, instead of leaving them with a boring old babysitter and a night of watching bad TV, you hire one of our beautiful princesses or fierce pirates to entertain and care for them while you’re away? All for the same price as a regular boring old babysitter!!!

  CALL PRINCESSES AND PIRATES, INC. TODAY!

  555-0122

  “So . . . what do you think?” I asked, presenting the newly printed flyer to my friends at lunch Monday. They passed it to one another, reading it over, then looked up at me.

  “It’s perfect!” Sarah declared. “Absolutely perfect.”

  “People are going to be bending over backward to give us babysitting jobs,” added Madison. “I call dibs on the first pirate request!”

  “We’re going to have more jobs than we know what to do with!” crowed Kalani, rubbing her hands together in excitement.

  I smiled, feeling very pleased. “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to get a bunch of these printed out in the computer lab, then go around tonight and hang them up in the neighborhood. At the playgrounds, the mailbox areas. Anywhere parents might hang out.”

  “I can hang them around the softball fields after practice,” Madison said. “There’s always tons of parents with little kids there.”

  “I can post stuff on Facebook,” Kalani added. “There’s that new neighborhood group everyone’s on. They’re always looking for babysitters.”

  “Ooh, and maybe we can hit up the local newspaper?” Sarah suggested. “Get them to do an article on us or whatever?”

  “Let’s get a few jobs under our belts first,” I said. “Make sure we’ve really got this before we alert the media.”

  “Yeah, we don’t even have any princess or pirate costumes yet,” Madison pointed out. “Maybe that’s something we need to talk about before the flyers.”

  “Agreed. Normally I’d say we should make our own like we do for our other cosplays,” I said. “But we need to get started sooner rather than later if we’re going to have enough time to make the money we need by the end of May.”

  “Ooh! I almost forgot!” Sarah burst out. “Mee-Maw said we could use her attic!”

  We all looked at her, puzzled.

  “Don’t you remember? My grandmother used to be an actress!” she reminded us. “And she has all these wardrobes and chests up in her attic, just full of costumes. I used to raid them all the time when I was a kid. Of course, they didn’t fit me back then. But now . . . all we have to do is go up there and pick out what we want and she’ll let us borrow them.”

  “That’s great!” I exclaimed. “Then we’d only have to buy the pirate costumes.” I turned to the group. “Okay. Today is flyer day—I really want to get the word out. Then tomorrow we’ll raid Sarah’s grandmother’s attic after school.” I smiled at my friends. “Sound like a plan?”

  Everyone nodded in agreement just as the bell rang, announcing it was time to head back to class. As I accompanied Sarah to return my tray, she turned to me, giving me an expectant look.

  “So where is it?” she asked.

  I frowned. “Where is what?”

  “The next chapter, of course!” she cried. “It was your turn, remember? I did yesterday’s!”

  Uh-oh. I bit my lower lip. I had been so busy last night, working on the flyer, I’d completely forgotten I owed her a new chapter in the Collin Prince story.

  Okay, fine. I hadn’t completely, completely forgotten. It was just . . . homework had taken a long time, and when I’d finally finished, I’d really wanted to work on my more important project: the story for the Comicpalooza writer’s contest.

  But I couldn’t exactly tell her that. She would flip out if she knew I was working on something new, now that she was cowriting the sensational Collin Prince saga. In fact, she’d probably say something crazy like I should enter that story into the competition. Which was, of course, ridiculous. The story was fun, after all. But definitely not prizewinning literature.

  Not that I could say that to her. At least not without sounding insulting.

  I realized she was still staring at me, waiting for an answer. I barked out what I hoped was a casual laugh. “Oh my gosh!” I cried. “I can’t believe I forgot to bring it to school.”

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “So it’s written?” she asked. “It’s just . . . home?”

  “I’ll email it the second I get home,” I promised. “So you won’t have to wait.”

  “Oh, fine.” She pretended to pout. “I suppose I can wait that long. But you’d better have that bad boy up before dinner,” she added. “Or I am coming to your house and stealing it from your bedroom.”

  My stomach squirmed. “No need,” I assured her. “It’ll be up. I promise.”

  Guess I knew what I’d be working on this study hall.

  * * *

  And so I found myself, later that afternoon, canvassing the neighborhood on my bike with my newly printed flyers. I hit up all the mailbox stations and the three playgrounds and I was just working on the rec center when I heard a voice behind me.

  “Are kids really bored of babysitters?”

  I whirled around, my eyes widening as they fell on a boy around my age straddling a silver bicycle. It took me a moment to recognize him as Brody, the new kid at school who had just joined my pre-algebra class.

  In class he sat at the opposite end of the room from me, so I hadn’t been able to get a good look at him up until now. He was tall, with curly brown hair that hung a bit too long into his eyes, and he wore ripped jeans with a pair of gray Converse on his feet. But what really got my attention was his shirt—with the Legend of Zelda Tri-Force symbol emblazoned on the front.

  So he was a gamer. Interesting.

  I realized he was waiting for an answer. “Um, some kids might be bored,” I said with a shrug, feeling a little sheepish. “Though I didn’t, like, do an official study on it or anything. . . .”

  He didn’t reply. Just dismounted his bike and kicked out the kickstand, then headed in my direction and plucked the flyer from my hand.

  “Princess babysitting?” He looked up. “Is that a thing?”

  I felt my face heat, though I wasn’t sure why. “It’s going to be a thing,” I told him. “My friends and I are starting our own company.”

  “Where you dress up as princesses and go babysitting?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Or pirates. I mean, we haven’t actually done it yet, but that’s the plan.”

  “Cool.” To my surprise,
instead of returning the flyer, he took the tape out of my other hand and proceeded to hang it up for me on the bulletin board. I watched, shuffling from foot to foot, feeling like I should say something but having no idea what to say.

  “We’re just trying to make some money,” I blurted out at last, feeling even more lame. ’Cause, duh, why else would you start a babysitting company? For your health?

  He turned to me, handing me back the tape. “What for?” he asked.

  “Wh-what?”

  “You said you’re trying to make money. Is it for something in particular?”

  “Oh. Um . . .” I swallowed hard, my mind racing for something cool to say, but coming up blank. Of course I could tell him the truth—about Collin Prince—but it just suddenly seemed kind of embarrassing. What if he thought Collin Prince was lame? Most boys thought he was cool, but not all. And if he did think Collin Prince was lame, would he think I was lame for wanting to spend all that money to go see him?

  Suddenly I remembered. “There’s this writing thing,” I blurted out. “At this comic convention in Houston in June.”

  “You mean Comicpalooza?”

  My eyes widened. “You know about Comicpalooza?”

  “Sure. I used to live in Houston before I moved here. I’ve been every year with my dad. He’s an author and he signs books and speaks on panels and stuff.”

  I stared at him. His dad was an actual author? Like published and everything? That was the coolest thing ever!

  “I want to be an author someday too,” I told him, feeling a little sheepish about admitting it. “Which is why I want to enter this writing contest they’re having. It’s for kids under sixteen and the winner gets a scholarship to a summer writing camp.”

  “Summer writing camp? That sounds cool. I mean, I’m not a writer or anything, but if I was, I’d totally want to do something like that.”

  “Right? Of course, I need to save up enough money to get to Comicpalooza if I even want to enter. It’s not cheap with the hotel and everything.”

  Brody nodded. “Well, I think that’s a very noble goal,” he said with a grin. A really cute grin, I might add, not that I was noticing. “And here I’m just trying to scrounge up enough money to buy a new PlayStation.”