Who Made You a Princess?

by Shelley Adina

  Why did God keep sending me praying people?

  What was He up to?

  If I was quiet during dinner (something Mr. Loyola called “meat gravy” that was more like this massive stew and tasted amazing), they must have chalked it up to the drugs, because no one bugged me about it. And when I went upstairs early, no one said anything then, either.

  Except before I went, I found Mrs. Loyola in the kitchen.

  “Um, Mrs. L.?” Instead of answering, she turned and gave me a hug. “Do you have an extra Bible lying around?”

  No fuss, no muss. She just took me into a room full of books and fabric and big, clumsy pencil sketches tacked on easels, and dug one out from under a pile. “Keep it.”

  I brushed off the pebbly leather binding. “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure, you can. I have a couple of different versions for studying. This is the NIV. It’s pretty easy to follow.”

  “But I—”

  “Shani.” She stopped me with a look. “Let me do this one thing for you.”

  One thing? Out of the dozens she’d done for me today alone? “I, um…okay.”

  She was so practical about it, as if I’d asked for a hot water bottle or another pillow. I took the Bible back to my room, brushed my teeth, climbed into bed, and looked at it.

  My grandmother used to read me passages when I was a kid, and she’d quote stuff like, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” That was a favorite when I’d been bad. But there were interesting stories, too. The lady who freaked when she found one of her gold coins was missing, and tore her house apart until she found it. The guy who bought up some real estate because he’d heard there was a treasure buried there.

  But I didn’t know what I was looking for. And if I did, I didn’t know how to find it. But there had to be a reason why my friends went to this book when they were down about something, or when they needed to make a decision.

  Um, Lord? You there? I could really use a hand, here. I opened it on a random page.

  “For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’”

  Oh, gack.Thanks a lot. I nearly gave up then and there. But when I closed it and looked out the window, there were all those rows and rows of grapes in the moonlight. Gillian told me once that people produced fruit, too. Like honesty when you talk. And kindness, like Mrs. Loyola. And love and joy.

  Hm. Maybe there was a reason Jesus was always talking about vineyards. I flipped to a different place, looking for stuff about fruit. At the very beginning of Proverbs it said:

  “… they will eat the fruit of their ways

  and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.

  For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,

  and the complacency of fools will destroy them;

  but whoever listens to me will live in safety

  and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

  Okay, I could live with that. Because my parents were welcome to the fruit of their schemes—it wasn’t going to be me eating it, that was for sure. Proverbs was interesting. I kept going.

  “Choose my instruction instead of silver,

  knowledge rather than choice gold,

  for wisdom is more precious than rubies,

  and nothing you desire can compare with her.”

  Hah! Rubies or not, if that wasn’t referring to a certain necklace I could name, I didn’t know what was. I liked what it said about choosing. Because as far as my dad was concerned, I had two choices: marry Rashid or face total ruin. There was no Plan C.

  But what if there was? “Choose my instruction,” it said right there in black and white. What did it mean to be instructed by God? Was He like Mr. Milsom in the bio lab, ranting at people about cleaning up their benches? No, probably not. It probably meant just what I was doing. Reading. And listening.

  Okay, Lord, I don’t know anything about this, but I am for sure listening now. Can You give me some instruction, please? Do I really have the power of choice here? Or are You gonna make me obey my mother and father so they can hand me a big helping of the fruit of their schemes? Is that what You want for me, Lord? Because if it is, I’m not liking it much.

  I know I don’t have any right to come around asking, but can You help me choose a path? Show me what I’m supposed to do? Because I don’t have anywhere else to go. You’re it, big guy.

  And one of us has to do something. Soon.

  Chapter 19

  I HOBBLED INTO THE dining room the next morning to see Danyel Johnstone sitting at the table, yakking it up with my friends as if he’d been here all along.

  My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  “Hey, Shani.” He got up and came around the table to give me a hug. Ow. “I got in at two in the morning. I didn’t think you’d appreciate me waking you up to say hey.”

  “How…what…”

  Carly put up her hand as if she were swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Which I suppose she’s had a lot of practice at lately. “I did it. I sent him an e-mail yesterday with a map telling him how to get here. If you’re going to kill me, do it in private, okay?”

  “Kill you?” Finally, brain caught up with mouth and produced words. “I don’t think so.”

  I glanced up as Mrs. Loyola came through the door to the kitchen with a big plate of French toast—a refill, obviously. The hoglips around the table had apparently not waited for every last one of us to haul our butts out of bed. “Morning, Mrs. L.”

  “Hi, Shani. I’m so glad you invited Danyel.”

  “Do you really have rooms for all of us?”

  “I have him in the sunroom on the daybed. It’ll be fine to sleep in, but it gets warm in the afternoons.”

  “You can put me on the floor if you want,” Danyel said. “Like I said last night, I don’t care.”

  “The next person who turns up gets the floor.” She filled a pitcher of syrup and put it on the table. “La Gallina Contento is officially full. The last time that happened, I had the entire rowing team here for the weekend. The grocery store in town probably hasn’t recovered yet.”

  She raised an eyebrow at Brett, who shrugged. “What can I say? We eat a lot.”

  After breakfast, Lissa and Gillian made Tate wash the dishes while they dried. Carly and Brett made like vapor and vanished, and I found myself walking (slowly) across the lawn with Danyel.

  I think the whole maneuver was planned. Those girls are good.

  “So, car accident.” Danyel stretched out on the grass, which sloped to a stand of oaks and then the grapevines beyond. In the distance, the tractor put-putted in slow motion down the rows. “Feel like telling me what happened?”

  “You mean Carly hasn’t already?”

  “She gave me the headlines. I’m having a hard time believing them. It’s like reading News of the World if you’re not one of the Men in Black.”

  So I filled him in. It took a long time—not including the parts where he got up, stalked around the lawn saying not very nice things, and then sitting down again to get the next installment.

  “I gotta tell you, I’m having a real hard time with this.” He folded himself up beside me as if he intended to stay put this time. “I don’t know how you handle it.”

  “I’m not,” I confessed. “Mostly I’m just whining to my friends and crying. I finally tried to read some in the Bible last night.”

  His warm brown gaze felt as good as sunshine. Better. It went all the way through me. “Yeah? Did it help?”

  “I don’t know.” Then I reconsidered. “Yeah, it did. My dad says I have two options. But the place where I was reading showed me I might have another one. It said to choose instruction over riches.”

  “So, what—you’re going to go to college instead of get married?”

  “Duh. I don’t think that was the instruction it was talking about. That’s, like, reading the Bible,
right? And listening to God.”

  His gaze never left my face. A quality I discovered I liked in a guy. Not that there was much I didn’t like about Danyel.

  “You surprise me,” he said.

  “Why? Did I read it wrong?”

  “Not that I can tell. The Spirit must be working it with you.”

  My whole body just…suffused. I felt warm all over, right to the heart. But was it because I had Danyel’s complete attention, or his approval, or because I was happy about the Spirit doing its thing?

  Oh, stop analyzing it and just be happy you can feel anything at all. Think about this time last year, when you were walking around the halls at school like a robot, with nothing to look forward to but graduation. No friends, no life, no joy about anything except seeing how far you could run up your credit cards before your dad called to yell and give you some attention.

  “This situation stinks,” I said, “but I guess I can be happy about that. The Spirit, I mean.”

  “You guess? I know I’m happy about it.”

  “But I’m not like you. You and Lissa and Gillian and Carly…you’re all God’s little BFFs. I don’t have any clue what I’m doing.”

  “You’re going to the Bible for answers, aren’t you? That’s what us BFFs do.”

  Huh. Maybe. “I’m going to you, too.”

  “Another thing BFFs are for. God wants us to find the answers. And to give us more questions to ask Him and each other.”

  “You being here is an answer. And I didn’t even pray…for that.” A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it down.

  He smiled at me. “I bet Carly did.”

  Then, Carly-like, she acted. And it was totally the right thing to do.

  “So if you read, and you prayed, and it looks like the answer is clear, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.

  “I know what I want to do. Ask some more questions. Go to college. Get that M.B.A. But that still doesn’t tell me what to do about my dad and PetroNova and everything else.”

  He picked a blade of grass out of the lawn and began folding it up into sections, like an accordion. “You said he chose to do that, right? Make the deal with the Sheikh even though he wasn’t the guy who would have to keep it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you didn’t make any deal, from what I can tell. They can’t force you.”

  “Maybe they can. Maybe they can throw a bag over my head and fly me to Yasir and make me marry Rashid.”

  “I think there are laws against that.”

  “The Sheikh is the law there.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry. I didn’t have much time to get to know Rashid, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d want his fiancée treated that way.”

  “That’s the thing.” I wrapped my arms around my knees. “He is a nice guy. For a while there, I liked him a lot.”

  “More than me?” He grinned like it was a joke, but I shook my head.

  “He did it for me physically, but it was always you who could do it for me all the other ways.”

  “Whoa.” He blinked, fast, the way people do when firecrackers go off under their noses. “You got physical with that guy?”

  “Would you relax? We just kissed.”

  “Kissing leads to other stuff.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You sound like my mother. And if it were any of your nevermind, I’d tell you it didn’t lead to anything. Nothing. Nada. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Besides, I kissed you.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Stop it, girl. When we get around to kissing for real, it won’t be an accident.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  He grinned at me. “I always keep ’em. Consider yourself warned.”

  Shivery anticipation tingled all the way down to my feet. I hoped it wasn’t visible. “So, getting back on topic,” I said, “is that what you think I should do? Tell my dad I can’t keep a promise he made before I was born? Let him lose his company, our house, the whole enchilada? That seems really harsh.”

  “Maybe, but when people gamble, sometimes they lose. And what if God has a plan for your life that doesn’t include being Princess of Yasir?”

  “Seems like He does, huh.”

  “I’d say so.”

  In the distance, the sound of dirt bikes growling up and down a steep slope chattered across the fields. Carly’s hair was probably flying in the wind as she rode, keeping up with Brett.

  What would she tell me?

  I think you already know.

  I rolled onto my stomach and rested my chin in my hands. Danyel was the kind of guy who didn’t mind when silences fell. He gazed into the hazy golden distance, giving me space while I struggled against the ropes of a promise no girl should have to keep.

  Why should I have to make this decision? What a waste of time and emotion. I should be plotting on how to get Danyel to kiss me, like a normal girl.

  But no. According to my dad, I wasn’t a normal girl and never had been. I was a princess-in-training without even knowing about it.

  Danyel chuckled, almost too low to hear.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking about that verse in First Peter that talks about us being part of a royal family. You’ve been a princess your whole life without even knowing it.”

  I rolled to a sitting position, staring at him. “What did you say? Do you, like, read minds?”

  “Here.” He pulled his BlackBerry out of his pocket and brought up the Internet, then the Bible site I’d seen Carly using when she was supposed to be studying.

  “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

  “That’s weird,” I breathed. “I was just thinking how I wasn’t normal—that my parents have been bringing me up to be this royal somebody I don’t want to be.”

  “And all this time God had a bigger plan. He already thinks you’re a princess. You’ve just been living like one of those ex-pats, in a foreign country. But I think you’re on the way home, aren’t you?”

  Home.

  I’d always thought it was Chicago. Lately I’ve thought it was San Francisco. But maybe it wasn’t either of those places. Maybe it wasn’t a place at all. Maybe it was a person.

  Or a Being.

  Or both.

  I hated the thought of being a princess in the eyes of my parents, and even those of the people over there in Yasir. But being a princess in the eyes of God was completely different. It made me feel…wanted. Loved. Like I’d been handed a sparkly tiara to wear on the inside, just because I was me.

  I took a deep breath. “I think I know what I’m going to do.”

  Danyel nodded. “You’ll tell me if you need me, right?”

  “Believe me, you’ll be the second one to know.”

  TEXT MESSAGE ____________________________

  Beryl Hanna If you don’t answer your messages I’m calling the police.

  Shani Hanna Chill, Mom. I’m in Napa with friends.

  Beryl Hanna What?! Why aren’t you in SF talking to your father and me? Irresponsible!

  Shani Hanna Needed some space.

  Beryl Hanna The dr. said rest.

  Shani Hanna I am resting. Thinking. Making a decision.

  Beryl Hanna Care to let me in on it?

  Shani Hanna Meet you at school Sunday night, 7:00 p.m. Visitors’ study.

  Beryl Hanna Finally some sense.

  Chapter 20

  DANYEL CARRIED MY BAG up Spencer’s front steps and into the reception hall. Only he forgot to put it down. Instead, turning a three-sixty, he stared up at the marble staircase, at the row of French windows opening out on the grassy quad, at the carved wooden doors leading to the administration offices (which, since it was Sunday afternoon, were closed).

  “You call this a schoo
l?”

  “Welcome to Spencer Academy.” Lissa and Gillian passed him on their way up the stairs. “No boys allowed past this point.”

  “Want me to take that up?” Carly grabbed my bag out of his hand and hefted it. “You should give him a tour.”

  Through the windows, I caught a glimpse of Rashid at one of the tables in the quad with Vanessa. A stack of books sat beside them, and as he pointed something out in her notebook, he made explanatory gestures with his hands.

  Ha. Vanessa wasn’t exactly short on brains. I’d bet a crème brulée she was playing dumb to get him to hang with her, out there where everyone on four floors could look down and see them.

  Danyel watched me watching Rashid. “Who’s the chick?”

  I shrugged. “Random royalty. Come on, I’m starving. Let’s get you a visitor pass and then raid the dining room.”

  We collected pass and snacks and I gave him the twenty-five-cent tour of the main building. We were down in the music wing, where Danyel had gotten a kick out of plinking out the melody to some old Beach Boys song on one of the concert harps, when we met a gaggle of seniors in the hall outside, carrying sheet music like they’d been at rehearsal.

  “Is that her?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah, it is.” DeLayne Geary stuck out a hip and propped a hand on it. “The PG Princess herself.” The others fanned out behind her, blocking the corridor so Danyel and I couldn’t get past without hip-checking someone out of the way.

  I mimicked her pose—which was a lot more convincing on me, let me tell you. “What are you saying? Let us by.”

  “I hear you been doing bad things, nasty girl.”

  “I hear you crazy,” I retorted in her same fake street vernacular. “Give me specifics or shut up.”

  “Pre-ggo.” Dani Lavigne stepped out from under Rory Stapleton’s arm. Eww. “preg-go, preg-go.” The rest took up the chant. “preg-go, preg-go!”

  This was not the Italian word for “you’re welcome,” which slipped out of Mrs. Loyola now and again. I stared at them, completely incredulous that a stupid rumor was still making the rounds—and that anyone with a brain believed it.