Forever Princess

by Meg Cabot

  And she got up and left, just as two girls who looked only kind of familiar to me came in and went, “Oh my God, aren’t you, like, Mia Thermopolis?”

  And I was like, “Yeah.” What now? Seriously. I don’t know how much more I can take.

  And they went, “You better get back out there. People are looking for you. Everyone is saying they’re going to name you prom queen. They’re just, like, waiting for you to come back out so they can start the ceremony.”

  So. Yeah. Looks like I’m prom queen.

  Sadly, if J.P. is prom king, he’s in for a big surprise.

  Sunday, May 7, midnight, limo on the way downtown

  I walked out of the ladies’ room and sure enough, they were calling out the names of the Albert Einstein High School prom king and queen: J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy IV and Mia Thermopolis.

  I’m not even kidding.

  How did I go from the geekiest girl in the whole school my freshman year to prom queen my senior year? I don’t get it.

  I guess turning out to be a princess might have helped.

  But I don’t think that had all that much to do with it, really.

  J.P. came through the crowd and found me and smilingly took my hand and steered me up to the stage where the lights were shining so brightly down on us. Everyone was screaming. Principal Gupta handed him a plastic scepter and put a rhinestone tiara on my head. Then she made a speech about positive moral values and how we exemplified them, and how everyone should look up to us.

  Which was a pretty big joke, if you consider what we’d both planned on doing after the prom. Oh, and what I’d been doing in an old-timey horse carriage yesterday with my ex.

  Then J.P. grabbed me and dipped my body back and kissed me, and everyone cheered.

  And I let him because I didn’t want to embarrass him by having Lars taser him right there in front of the entire senior class.

  Although that’s really what I felt like doing.

  Except if you think about it, it’s not like I’m all that morally superior to him. I mean, I’m wearing his ring, and I’m not a bit in love with him. At least, anymore. And I lie all the time, too.

  Except that my lies were to make people feel better.

  His lies? Not so much.

  But at least I intend to do something about it.

  Anyway, right after our kiss, a lot of balloons came down from the ceiling and the DJ put on a super fast punk version of The Cars’ “Let the Good Times Roll,” and everyone started dancing like mad.

  Except for me and J.P.

  That’s because I pulled him off the stage and said, “We need to talk.”

  Only I had to shout it to be heard above the music.

  I don’t know what J.P. thought I said, but he went, “Great, yeah, okay, let’s go.”

  I guess he was in a really good mood on account of being made prom king. Our whole way out of the ballroom, we kept getting congratulated by all the girls, and J.P. kept getting high-fived by all the guys—when he wasn’t getting chest-bumped, like by Lana’s Westpointer date—for his mad prom king skills. That made our progress out the doors to the lobby, where it was quieter, very slow.

  But we finally made it.

  “Look, J.P.,” I said, dragging the plastic tiara off my head. It was really uncomfortable and I’m sure had ruined my pretty hairdo. But I didn’t care. I checked to make sure Lars was nearby. He was, sticking his fingers in his ears to check his hearing, which he apparently feared had been damaged by the din inside the ballroom. “I’m really sorry about this.”

  The thing is, Dad had only said I had to go to the prom with J.P. And as far as I was concerned, the prom was over now. I mean, they’d crowned the king and queen. So, I felt like that meant the evening was complete.

  Which meant, as far as J.P. was concerned, I was done.

  “Sorry about what?” J.P. had walked me over toward a bank of elevators. I had no idea why at the time, because the hotel exit was on the ground floor, and so was the ballroom. But later, I figured it out. “This is actually the perfect time to leave. That music was driving me crazy. I don’t know what’s wrong with a little Josh Groban. And there’s no better time to go than with everybody wanting more, right? How’s your foot? Does it still hurt? Look—” He dropped his voice. “Shouldn’t you tell Lars he can go now? I can take it from here.” He smiled knowingly, then stabbed the elevator button UP.

  I had no idea what he was doing. Or what he was talking about. At least, not then. I was completely focused on what I had to do.

  “It’s just,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt him. Grandmère had given me a speech to use for letting down suitors gently.

  But honestly. What he’d done to Lilly? That was unforgivable. And I didn’t see any reason to let him down gently.

  “I think it’s time we were honest with each other,” I said. “Really honest. I know it’s you who’s been calling the paparazzi every time we go out. I can’t prove it, but it’s pretty obvious. I don’t know why you do it. Maybe you think it’s good publicity for your future career as a writer or something. I don’t know. But I don’t like it. And I’m not going to put up with it anymore.”

  J.P. looked down at me with a shocked expression on his face. He said, “Mia. What are you talking about?”

  “And the thing with the play?” I shook my head. “J.P., you wrote an entire play about me. How could you do that—drag my personal life, like the thing with the sexy dancing, out into the public like that—and let Sean Penn make a movie out of it? If you really loved me, you’d never do something like that. I once wrote a short story about you, but that was before I got to know you, and once I did get to know you, I had all the copies of it destroyed, because it’s not fair to take advantage of people that way.”

  J.P.’s jaw dropped a little lower. He started shaking his head. “Mia. I wrote that play for us. To let the world know how happy we are—how much I love you—”

  “And that’s another thing,” I said. “If you love me so much, how come you’ve never read my book? I’m not saying it’s the greatest book in the world, but you’ve had it a week, and you still haven’t read it. You couldn’t have skimmed it, and told me what you thought? I appreciate your trying to get me this fantastic book deal, which I don’t need because I already got one on my own, but you couldn’t have glanced at it?”

  “Mia.” Now J.P. was starting to look defensive. “This again? You know I’ve been busy. We had finals. And I was in rehearsal—”

  “Yeah.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I know. You’ve told me. You have a lot of excuses. But I’m curious to know what your excuse is for why you lied about the hotel room.”

  He took his hands out of his pockets and spread his palms, face out, toward me, in the age-old gesture of innocence. “Mia, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “The rooms in this hotel were sold out weeks ago. Seriously, J.P.” I shook my head. “There’s no way you called this week and got a room. Be honest. You made the reservation months ago, didn’t you? You just assumed you and I would be hooking up tonight.”

  J.P. dropped his hands. He also dropped the pretense.

  “What’s so wrong with that?” he wanted to know. “Mia, I know how you and your friends talk about prom night—and everything that entails. I wanted to make it special for you. So that makes me a bad guy all of a sudden?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Because you weren’t honest with me about it. And, okay, J.P., I wasn’t honest with you about a lot of stuff either, like about the colleges I got into and my feelings and…well, a lot of stuff. But this was big. I mean, you lied to me about why you broke up with Lilly. You told her you loved me! That’s the whole reason she was so mad at me for so long, and you knew it, and you never told me!”

  J.P. just shook his head. Shook it a lot.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “If you’ve been talking to Lilly—”

  “J.P.,” I said. I couldn’t believe it. I
couldn’t believe what he was saying. I couldn’t believe he was lying. To my face! I’m a liar. I’m the princess of liars. And he was trying to lie to me? About something that mattered this much? How dare he! “Stop lying. Lilly and I are friends again. She told me everything. She told me you slept with her! J.P., you aren’t a virgin at all. You were never saving yourself for me. You slept with her! And you never thought that was something you ought to mention to me? How many girls have you slept with, J.P.? I mean, really?”

  J.P.’s face was turning so red it was almost purple. Still, he kept trying to salvage the situation. As if there were anything left to salvage.

  “Why would you believe her?” J.P. cried, shaking his head some more. “After what she did to you? That website she made up? And you believe her? Mia—are you crazy?”

  “No,” I said. “One thing I absolutely am not, J.P., is crazy. Lilly made up that website because she was angry. Angry at me, for not being a better friend to her. And yes…I believe her. You’re the one I can’t believe, J.P. Just how many lies have you told me since we started going out?”

  He stopped shaking his head. Then he said, “Mia—”

  And he looked…well, terrified is the only word I can think of to describe it.

  Just then, the elevator doors opened in front of us. And Lars came over to check to make sure the car was empty. Then he asked dryly, “You two aren’t going anywhere, correct?”

  J.P. said, “Actually, we—”

  But I said, realizing just then where those elevators went—upstairs, to the hotel rooms—“No.”

  And Lars backed away again.

  And the elevator doors closed and went away.

  Here’s the thing: I’m not going to say that I don’t think J.P. ever cared about me. Because I think he did. I really do.

  And the truth is, I cared about J.P., too. I did. He was a good friend at a time when I needed friends. Maybe we’ll even be friends again, someday.

  But not right now.

  Because right now, I think a big part of the reason he liked me so much is because he wants to be a famous playwright, and he thought hanging out with me could help make him that way.

  It sucks to have to admit this. That a guy really only liked me because I’m royal. How many times am I going to fall for this, anyway?

  But you know what else sucks sometimes?

  Actually being a princess. And having people who are so fascinated by this that they can’t see the person you are behind the crown. The kind of person who wants to be judged on her own merits. The kind of person who doesn’t care if someone offers her a quarter of a million dollars for her book. She’d rather have less money if it’s from someone who really values her work.

  Oh, sure. People will claim they like you for who you are. They might even do a really good imitation of it. So good, you’ll even believe it. For a while.

  The thing is, if you’re smart, there’ll be clues. It may take you a while to pick up on them.

  But you will. Eventually.

  And in the end, it all boils down to this:

  The people who were your friends before you got the crown are the people who are going to be your best friends no matter what. Because they’re the ones who love you for you—you, in all your geekiness—and not because of what they can get out of you. Weirdly, in some instances, even the people who were your enemies before you got famous (like Lana Weinberger) can end up being better friends to you than the people you become friends with after you become famous. And even when those friends get mad at you—like Lilly was at me—you still need them, even more than ever. Because they might just be the only people who are willing to tell you the truth.

  That’s just the way it is. It’s lonely on the throne.

  Luckily for me, I had fabulous friends before I ever found out I was the princess of Genovia.

  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past four years, it’s that I better do my best to try to hold on to them.

  No matter what.

  Which is why I found myself giving J.P. the speech Grandmère had taught me—the one for letting suitors down gently.

  “J.P.,” I said, pulling the ring he’d given me off my finger. “I care about you. I really do. And I wish you the best. But the truth is, I think we’re better off as friends. Good friends. So I want to give this back to you.”

  And I lifted his hand, and put the ring back in the center of his palm, and closed his fingers around it.

  He looked down at his hand with an expression of abject misery on his face.

  “Mia,” he said. “I can explain why I didn’t tell you about Lilly. The thing is, I didn’t think you—”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t need to say another word. Don’t feel bad.” I reached up and patted him on the shoulder.

  I guess I could have felt sorry for myself because my prom had gotten totally and completely ruined. I’d gone to it with a guy who’d turned out to be a total phony.

  But I remembered what my dad said about how it’s the duty of royalty always to be the stronger person, and to make everyone else feel better. And I took a deep breath and said, “You know what I think you should do? Call Stacey Cheeseman. I think she has a total crush on you.”

  J.P. looked down at me as if I were nuts. “You do?”

  “I totally do,” I lied. But it was a white lie. And I was pretty sure she did have a crush on him. All actresses adore their director.

  “This is completely embarrassing,” J.P. said. Now he was looking down at the ring.

  “No, it’s not,” I said, patting him on the shoulder some more. “Now, are you going to call her?”

  “Mia,” J.P. said, his expression stricken. “I’m sorry. But I thought if you knew the truth about Lilly, you’d never—”

  I held up my hand to indicate he should say no more. Really, you would think a man of the world such as he would know better than to keep trying to get me back when I had made it so clear I was done.

  I wondered how much of his reluctance to call Stacey was rooted in the fact that she isn’t really that famous. Yet.

  But I decided this thought was ungenerous of me. I’m really trying to be more princesslike in my thoughts and actions.

  I also wasn’t trying to let my gleefulness over the situation show. You know, that even though my prom was a total bust, I’d gotten my best friend back, and I hadn’t been a bit in love with my prom date, with whom I was breaking up, in the first place.

  I tried to keep a solemn expression on my face as I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him.

  “Good-bye, J.P.,” I whispered.

  Then I hurried away before there was any chance he could start begging, which is so unattractive in a suitor (well, so Grandmère says. It hasn’t happened to me…yet. But I had a feeling it was about to).

  And as I was hurrying, I flipped open my cell phone and made a quick call to the Royal Genovian lawyers. Their offices weren’t open yet, because it was only seven in the morning, Genovia time.

  But I left a message asking them to put a cease and desist on J.P.’s play, or whatever they had to do in order to prevent it from ever getting made into a movie, or even a Broadway show.

  I mean, I know I was princessy and gracious during our breakup. And I do completely forgive what J.P. did to me.

  But for what he did to Lilly? He’s going down.

  He really ought to have remembered that several of my ancestresses are known for strangling and/or chopping off the heads of their enemies.

  It was as I was putting my phone away that I crashed right into Michael.

  Yes, Michael.

  I was totally flabbergasted, of course. What was Michael doing at the AEHS prom?

  “Oh my God,” I cried. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” he demanded, rubbing his shoulder where I’d banged into him, handheld plastic tiara prongs first.

  “How long have you been standing there?” I was seized with a sudden pan
ic he might have overheard what J.P. and I had been discussing, vis-à-vis Lilly. On the other hand, if he had, surely there’d have been a murder already. J.P.’s, to be exact. “Wait…what did you hear?”

  “Enough to make me feel nauseous,” Michael said. “Nice move with the call to the lawyers, by the way. And is that really how you guys talk to each other?” His voice rose into a falsetto. “You know what I think you should do? Call Stacey Cheeseman. I think she has a total crush on you.” He lowered his voice again. “Cute. What does that remind me of, exactly? Hold on. Wait, I know…Seventh Heaven—”

  I grabbed his arm and dragged him around the corner, well out of earshot of J.P. (who hadn’t yet noticed a thing, because he’d already gotten on the phone with Stacey).

  “Seriously,” I said, dropping Michael’s arm when we were far enough away. “What are you doing here?”

  Michael grinned. He looked so cute in his black Skinner Box T-shirt with his messed up hair, and his jeans fitting him just right. I couldn’t help remembering all that making out we’d done yesterday. It came back as such a visceral memory, it was almost like a punch.

  Of course, that might have been because I’d also gotten a big whiff of him when I’d crashed into him. That major histocompatibility complex is strong stuff. Strong enough to knock a girl out, practically.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Lilly told me a couple of days ago I was supposed to show up here and meet you by the elevators at around midnight. She said she had a feeling you were going to need, er, my assistance. But you seemed to be handling the situation just fine, if that whole ceremonial giving-back-of-the-ring thing was any indication.”

  I could feel myself turning bright red, realizing what Lilly must have meant. Having overheard my conversation with Tina in the girls’ bathroom at school about my getting a hotel room with J.P. tonight, Lilly had sent her brother down here to stop me from doing something she knew I’d regret…

  Only she hadn’t told him exactly what he was supposed to be stopping me from doing. Thank God.