Who Made You a Princess?

by Shelley Adina

  Unlike certain other necklaces I’d glommed recently.

  It had now been a week and a half since the infamous Due opening, and the diamond necklace still sat in Ms. Curzon’s safe. But wait, I can hear you thinking. You were going to give that back to him the next day.

  I tried. But when I called him, it went straight to voice mail without even ringing. And then I had to hear from Vanessa Talbot, of all people, in our Macroeconomics class on Monday.

  “How was the Due opening?” she asked me, leaning across the aisle like she never does.

  “Fine. Great. SRO.”

  “We had a fabu time at Cream. Just a select few, and the celebrities, of course. I had such a hard time getting Channel Four to leave me alone. But a red carpet brings them in like flies, though I suppose you wouldn’t know.”

  I could mention a few other things that attracted flies, too, but I didn’t.

  “Lucky Rashid.” She sighed. “It must be nice, is all I can say.”

  In spite of myself, I had to ask. “What must be?”

  She looked at me, surprised. “Didn’t you hear? Spencer is sending a tutor to proctor his midterms. He flew home to Yasir for the week.”

  “Oh, that.” I pretended this was old news. “I thought you meant something else. He told me he was going ages ago.”

  Not.

  How was I supposed to return the necklace if the guy was out of the country? FedEx it to Yasir, care of the palace? Did FedEx even go to Yasir? Groaning inside, I tracked down Ms. Curzon and explained that the velvet box would have to stay where it was a little longer.

  “That’s not a problem, Miss Hanna,” she assured me. “The prince will be back. He was called home unexpectedly for a short time, that’s all. He is still expected to earn this term’s credits at Spencer.”

  Which was sort of a relief. Because I didn’t want him to jet out of my life thinking I was a two-timing skank. We’d been friends. Maybe a little more. He might not be part of my future anymore, but I wanted my present to be on good terms all the way around.

  And that meant talking to him. Somehow. Sometime. Soon.

  So, a week and a half later, I was getting antsy when I still hadn’t heard from him. I’d heard from Danyel, though: Two prayer-circle videos, numerous phone calls, and a bunch of IMs. On Wednesday, an actual paper letter came, handwritten in a spiky scrawl.

  Dear Shani,

  Thought I’d go retro and send a letter. Hope you like my midterm English project.

  Yours, Danyel

  Mine? I stared at the words. Somehow, knowing that his hand had held a fine-point blue Sharpie and guided these letters onto the paper meant more than a bunch of e-mail and instant messages. They seemed more solid, somehow. You couldn’t just hit Delete and make them go away. You’d have to act—rip or burn or crumple—to negate the action that had made them.

  Hmm. I’d obviously been spending too much time near the physics lab. Newton’s Law, you know?

  I opened the sheet folded inside the letter.

  To my lady, a sonnet

  I got no big house in Huntington Beach

  Got no connections to pick up and call

  No boss Ducati or Jaguar in reach

  No PDA to keep track of it all.

  What my God gave me is bigger than those

  I stand on the sand and check out the waves

  I talk straight up with the One that I chose

  And wish I could talk with the girl I crave.

  If I owned this beach I still would want you

  Having means sharing—hey, I can do that

  When you drove away you took my heart too

  Handle it lightly, ’cuz it’s all I got.

  I’ma wait here till you’re ready to choose

  Meantime a song’s a good cure for the blues.

  —Danyel

  I sat on my bed, shattered, and yet every atom of me glowing. How could I have spent even a minute thinking there was a choice between Rashid and Danyel? How could I have missed the totally obvious? What had I been thinking?

  I scrabbled through my bag, through the stuff on my bed, tossed aside the books sitting on my desk. Augghhh! Where was my phone?

  Then I spotted it on the carpet, halfway under the bed. I grabbed it with one hand and it went off like a fire alarm. With a shriek, I dropped it, then smacked my head on the bed rail trying to reach underneath and grab it before it went to voice mail.

  Shani, you dummy, get a grip. It’s probably not him anyway. “Hello?” I said breath-lessly, pressing a hand to the sore spot on my skull.

  “Hi, darling,” my mother chirped.

  “Mom!” I floundered through half a dozen things to say, then settled on a lame, “How are you?”

  “Superbe,” she said in a flawless accent that told me she was either in Paris or had just been there. “I have a surprise for you.”

  With my mother, it’s best not to guess. “Really? What?”

  “Come downstairs and I’ll show you.”

  I stalled. “Downstairs where? Where are you?”

  “In a very nice room your headmistress calls the visitors’ study. Daddy and I are waiting. Hurry, now!”

  I FLEW IN TO my dad’s arms and squeezed him as hard as I could, breathing in the scent of Polo cologne and crushing the fine wool of his suit under my hands. “I’m so glad to see you,” I said into his shirtfront. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sharing our happiness with you.” Smiling, Mom detached me and pulled me into a hug.

  I recognized her dress from the Valentino show in Milan. “You look great. Love the color.” The deep wine red showed off her coffee-colored skin, and she’d chosen a lipstick to match. “What do you mean, share your happiness? What’s the good news?”

  I gazed from one to the other as my dad ushered me over to the leather couch and waved me into it. Mom sat next to me while he took the chair kitty corner from it.

  Mom smiled, the cat-got-the-cream one that meant she was pleased with something I’d done. But I hadn’t done anything except pass my midterms (at least, I was pretty sure I’d passed with A’s and B’s) and make up my mind about a boy.

  And neither of those options would make my parents leave Paris to come and see me.

  It had to be something about them. “Don’t tell me. Are you guys renewing your vows?” They looked at each other. Uh, okay. Guess this had never occurred to either of them. “You’ve bought another company?” Dad shook his head. “You’re having another baby?”

  “Good grief, Shani,” my mother exploded. “Of course not!”

  “Well, then? Tell me.”

  “I think you have something to tell us.” When I just stared at her, Mom reached into her Chanel tote, its black patent as smooth as obsidian. She opened Paris Match to the centerfold and tossed it in my lap.

  I stared at the photograph filling the upper half of the page. A guy and a girl sat in the grass under a tree. The girl was reaching out with both hands as a guy offered her a—

  I blinked. That looked like—

  It was. And the necklace was as clear as day.

  I read the article so fast the type blurred. Then I got to the second picture. In it, Rashid and I were dancing, him behind me in some salsa hold with his hands around my hips. The light caught the necklace, bouncing off all those diamonds.

  My eyes hurt. I lowered the magazine and closed it. “I don’t get it.”

  Mom laughed. “I’d say you did. Where is that necklace now?”

  “In Ms. Curzon’s safe.”

  “That was sensible.” My dad’s baritone sounded solid, reassuring. Both of which I needed right now.

  “You know this article is total speculation, right? Rashid and I aren’t engaged. I’m only seventeen. That’s crazy!”

  “Age is irrelevant when it comes to the Kingdom of Yasir,” my mother told me.

  A needle of cold apprehension darted through my stomach. “What?”

  She waved a hand at the paper. “You saw wha
t it said. The Star of the Desert goes to the prince’s future bride. It’s been in the family for centuries. When Rashid’s mother, Queen Zuleikha, got engaged to the Sheikh, the stone was set in a ring. Rashid had it reset as the centerpiece of that necklace.”

  And here I’d thought it was nice. Different. I didn’t know the big old diamond had a name.

  Never mind that. What was going on in my mother’s perfectly coiffed head?

  “It doesn’t matter what it was, Mom. I’m giving it back to him. He’s in Yasir this week, or I’d have given it back days ago.”

  “Given it back? Why?”

  I stared at her. “Um, weren’t you the one who sent me to those deportment classes where they tell you never to accept expensive gifts from men?”

  “They weren’t talking about princes, sweetie.”

  “The point is, we’re just friends—in fact, at the moment I don’t think we’re even that. He found out I was seeing someone else and—”

  “What?” Dad blurted.

  I put up a placating hand. “Relax, Dad. He’s really nice. I met him at Mansfields’ this summer. His name is Danyel Johnstone and he’s—”

  “Wait, wait.” Mom waved her hands, brushing the thought of Danyel out of the air. “What have you done?”

  “Nothing.” Identical scary faces. I swallowed. “I hope you can meet Danyel soon, that’s all, because he’s—”

  “Are you telling us,” my father said slowly, carefully, “that you’re seeing some other boy? Not the prince?”

  “Well, Rashid is out of town, so technically I—”

  “Shani!”

  Okay, this was getting weird. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  My mother took a calming breath. “You know it’s unacceptable to be seeing this other boy while you’re seeing the prince.”

  “Well, yeah, I get that, which is why I made up my mind, finally.”

  “And?”

  I eyed him. “I don’t get why it matters so much who I go out with. I haven’t even seen you since—” Hm. How long had it been? “June.”

  “I care deeply when my daughter is involved with royalty.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that anymore, then. Rashid got a little tweaked when Danyel showed up at this restaurant opening last weekend. That’s when he took off and went back to Yasir.”

  “He’ll be back tomorrow,” Mom said.

  I had like two seconds to wonder how she knew this, when Dad said, “You’ll make it up with him. You’ll tell this Danyel boy that you won’t be seeing him anymore, and Rashid should be satisfied.”

  My jaw unhinged itself and hung open. “What?”

  “You heard me, Shani. It’s very important that your relationship with Rashid not be sidelined by irrelevant friendships.”

  Carly has this expression about stepping into an alternate universe, where people say things that make no sense and you wonder how you got there.

  And how you’re going to get out.

  I was so in that place now.

  Forming sentences was beyond me. So I went with small words. Simple and direct. “Why?”

  He glanced at my mother. They came to some wordless agreement and my mom slid closer to me on the couch. She took my hand in both of hers.

  Uh-oh. Something seriously big was going on. Because as you’ve probably figured out, my family isn’t the most touchy-feely one you’ve ever met.

  “Shani,” she began, “remember when I told you that your great-grandmother married one of Rashid’s great-uncles?”

  For a second, I couldn’t remember. Then a vague memory came of wondering if we were fifth cousins twice removed. “Yes.”

  “Well, she wasn’t the only one.”

  “Was he a bigamist or something?” I was trying to keep up, honest.

  “No, no. I mean, that isn’t the first time our two families have intermarried.”

  “I know.” I tried to remember what Rashid had said. “Since, like, the sixteen hundreds or something.”

  “That’s right. But what your mother is trying to say is that every three or four generations, our family—meaning my side—marries into Rashid’s family.” Dad looked at me as if this was supposed to mean something to me, but I must have looked as blank as I felt, because Mom picked up the story again.

  “There are any number of brothers and sisters on both sides in recent times, so this is pretty easy.”

  “There are? How come I’ve never met any of them?” I wanted to know. “To hear you guys talk, you’re onlies.”

  “We are, but our parents weren’t,” Dad said.

  “So okay, but what does this have to do with me? Yeah, we’ve kind of bonded because he’s some kind of cousin and we were friends when we were little. We appreciate each other for different reasons. But why does that mean I have to dump Danyel?”

  “Because, sweetie—” Mom took my hand in a firmer grip. “—you’re the fourth generation since your great-grandma.”

  I still didn’t get it.

  They gazed at me, waiting.

  And then all the synapses in my brain lined up and fired at once. “You have got to be kid-ding.”

  Mom smiled with encouragement, as though she was telling me some huge secret. “Not at all, darling. We’ve known it for years. Why else would we make sure you had the best education money could buy? And deportment and elocution classes?”

  “Uh, so I could run Dad’s company someday?”

  “No. You don’t need to know the rules of precedence to run an oil company. We’re very happy to hear that you’re friends who appreciate each other—that’s a wonderful place to start, now that you both are grown. Soon after you graduate, the Sheikh has given permission for you and Rashid to be married. You’ll become Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Yasir. Isn’t that exciting?”

  CARLY TOLD ME later that she could hear me screaming from three floors away.

  At that moment, every bad thought I’d ever buried, every lonely moment I’d ever had because my parents weren’t there, every deserted Saturday afternoon of going to the movies with a maid came spewing out of me and into the faces of the two people who were supposed to love me.

  Love me. Not sell me to the highest bidder.

  “No!” I shrieked. “No way am I marrying him. And you can’t force me into it!”

  “No one is forcing you,” my father tried to say, but I tromped right over him.

  “This has all been a setup. That’s why he’s here, isn’t it? It’s not to take computer science classes, it’s to romance me and make me fall for him.”

  “Well, of course we want you to be happy with your future husb—” my mother began.

  “Don’t say that word!” I threw my arms out and slapped a silk lampshade by accident. The lamp teetered dangerously before it rocked to a standstill. I grabbed a vase out of its niche in one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

  “Don’t you dare!” Mom warned.

  “Can you blame me?” I hefted it, calculating the distance past my father’s ear to the fireplace behind him. “What else is in the plan? You gonna march me to the church the day after graduation?”

  “No, of course not. Watch your language. You didn’t grow up in the projects. And there’ll be no talk of church. A state wedding would happen in Yasir, in the mosque.”

  “Mosque?”

  “We’ve already talked to your headmistress about you dropping one of your electives and taking World Religions for the last two terms. You’ll get private religious instruction, too, from an expert with the Yasiri embassy. No wedding will happen until you convert to the national religion, of course. The country wouldn’t accept anything less.”

  I stared at them, my eyes practically standing out on stalks. “This can’t be real.”

  My mother shook her head. “We converted several years ago, sweetie. It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Oh, it’s not,” I said. “In that case, I think I’ll be a Christian.”

  “
You can believe what you like in private, but for all public occasions, you and Rashid must present a united front.”

  “Me and Rashid nothing,” I managed to choke past the red gob of rage in my throat. “There is no me and Rashid. I’m not going along with any of this. You’re crazy.”

  “Don’t speak to your mother that way, young lady,” my father said.

  I laughed, a high hoot of disdain. “You have no right to tell me to do anything. You lost it when you checked me in here and left me behind for four years.”

  “You’re our daughter,” Mom said.

  “No, I’m not. If I was, you wouldn’t want to send me permanently to the other side of the world!”

  Mom tried to put her arms around me, but I jerked away, still holding the vase. The smooth china felt slippery under my fingers. “I won’t deny you were a surprise, but honey, the minute they put you in my arms I wanted you.”

  I faced her, my eyes filling with tears. I blinked them back. “Then how can you sell me off like this? Do you even know him?”

  “Of course we do,” my dad snapped. “Why do you think we’ve been spending so much time in the Middle East over the last five years? Rashid is a wonderful young man.”

  “How wonderful can he be if he’s going along with this?”

  “Shani, please—” Mom sounded as though she was going to cry.

  That made two of us—and it still wouldn’t match the tsunami of tears I’d cried since I was little, wondering why no one loved me and why my parents had more fun away from me than with me.

  “I’m leaving. I have homework to do.” With exaggerated care, I put the vase on a table next to the door and stalked out of the visitors’ study.

  Then I slammed the door as hard as I could.