by Meg Cabot
I’m going to have to take a good look at that compromise tonight, because I don’t recall it saying anything about princess lessons.
Here is how my first "lesson" went, yesterday after school:
First the doorman won’t even let me in (big surprise). Then he sees Lars, who is like six foot seven and must weigh three hundred pounds. Plus, Lars has this bulge sticking out of his jacket, and I only just now figured out that it’s a gun and not the stump of an extraneous third arm, which is what originally I thought. I was too embarrassed to ask him about it, in case it dredged up painful memories for him of being teased as a child in Amsterdam, or wherever he is from. I mean, I know what it’s like to be a freak: It’s just better not to bring that kind of thing up.
But no, it’s a gun, and the doorman got all upset about it and called the concierge over. Thank God the concierge recognized Lars, who’s staying there, after all, in a room in Dad’s suite.
So then the concierge himself escorted me upstairs to the penthouse, which is where Grandmère is staying. Let me tell you about this penthouse: It is very fancy. I thought the ladies’ room at the Plaza was fancy? The ladies’ room is nothing compared to this penthouse.
First of all, everything is pink. Pink walls, pink carpet, pink curtains, pink furniture. There are pink roses everywhere, and these portraits hanging on the walls that all feature pink-cheeked shepherdesses and stuff.
And just when I thought I was going to drown in pinkness, out came Grandmère, dressed completely in purple, from her silk turban all the way down to her mules with the rhinestone clips on the toes.
At least, I think they’re rhinestones.
Grandmère always wears purple. Lilly says people who wear purple a lot usually have borderline personality disorders, because they have delusions of grandeur. Traditionally, purple has always stood for the aristocracy, since for hundreds of years peasants weren’t allowed to dye their clothes with indigo, and therefore couldn’t make violet.
Of course, Lilly doesn’t know my grandmother IS a member of the aristocracy. So while Grandmère is definitely delusional, it’s not because she THINKS she’s an aristocrat; she really IS one.
So Grandmère comes in off the terrace, where she was standing, and the first thing she says to me is, "What’s that writing on your shoe?"
But I didn’t need to worry about getting caught cheating, because Grandmère started in right away about everything else that was wrong with me.
"Why are you wearing tennis shoes with a skirt? Are those tights supposed to be clean? Why can’t you stand up straight? What’s wrong with your hair? Have you been biting your nails again, Amelia? I thought we agreed you were going to give up that nasty habit. My God, can’t you stop growing? Is it your goal to be as tall as your father?"
Only it sounded even worse, because it was all in French.
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she goes, in her creaky old cigaretty voice, "Haven’t you a kiss for your grandmère, then?"
So I go up to her and bend down (my grandmother is like a foot shorter than me) and kiss her on the cheek (which is very soft because she rubs Vaseline on her face every night before she goes to bed), and then when I start to pull away she grabs me and goes, "Pfui! Have you forgotten everything I taught you?" and makes me kiss her on the other cheek, too, because in Europe (and SoHo), that’s how you say hello to people.
Anyway, I bent down and kissed Grandmère on the other cheek, and as I did so I noticed Rommel peeking out from behind her. Rommel is Grandmère’s fifteen-year-old miniature poodle. He is the same shape and size as an iguana, only not as smart. He shakes all the time and has to wear a fleece jacket. Today his jacket was the same purple as Grandmère’s dress. Rommel won’t let anyone touch him except for Grandmère, and even then he rolls his eyes around as if he were being tortured while she’s petting him.
If Noah had ever met Rommel, he might have changed his mind about letting two of all of God’s creatures on the ark.
"Now," Grandmère said when she felt we’d been affectionate enough, "let’s see if I have this right: Your father tells you that you are the princess of Genovia and you burst into tears. Why is this?"
All of a sudden, I got very tired. I had to sit down on one of the pink foofy chairs before I fell down.
"Oh, Grandmère," I said in English. "I don’t want to be a princess. I just want to be me, Mia."
Grandmère said, "Don’t converse in English with me. It’s vulgar. Speak French when you speak to me. Sit up straight in that chair. Do not drape your legs over the arm. And you are not Mia. You are Amelia. In fact, you are Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Renaldo."
I said, "You forgot Thermopolis," and Grandmère gave me the evil eye. She is very good at this.
"No," she said. "I did not forget Thermopolis."
Then Grandmère sat down in the foofy chair next to mine and said, "Are you telling me you have no wish to assume your rightful place upon the throne?"
Boy, was I tired. "Grandmère, you know as well as I do that I’m not princess material, okay? So why are we even wasting our time?"
Grandmère looked at me out of her twin tattoos of eyeliner. I could tell she wanted to kill me but probably couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting blood on the pink carpet.
"You are the heir to the crown of Genovia," she said in this totally serious voice. "And you will take my son’s place on the throne when he dies. This is how it is. There is no other way."
Oh, boy.
So I kind of went, "Yeah, whatever, Grandmère. Look, I got a lot of homework. Is this princess thing going to take long?"
Grandmère just looked at me. "It will take," she said, "as long as it takes. I am not afraid to sacrifice my time—or even myself—for the good of my country."
Whoa. This was getting way patriotic. "Um," I said. "Okay."
So then I stared at Grandmère for a while, and she stared back at me, and Rommel laid down on the carpet between our chairs, only he did it really slow, like his legs were too delicate to support all two pounds of him, and then Grandmère broke the silence by saying, "We will begin tomorrow. You will come here directly after school."
"Um, Grandmère. I can’t come here directly after school. I’m flunking Algebra. I have to go to a review session every day after school."
"Then after that. No dawdling. You will bring with you a list of the ten women you admire most in the world, and why. That is all."
My mouth fell open. Homework? There’s going to be homework? Nobody said anything about homework!
"And close your mouth," she barked. "It is uncouth to let it hang open like that."
I closed my mouth. Homework???
"Tomorrow you will wear nylons. Not tights. Not kneesocks. You are too old for tights and kneesocks. And you will wear your school shoes, not tennis sneakers. You will style your hair, apply lipstick, and paint your fingernails—what’s left of them, anyway." Grandmère stood up. She didn’t even have to push up with her hands on the arms of her chair, either. Grandmère’s pretty spry for her age. "Now I must dress for dinner with the shah. Good-bye."
I just sat there. Was she insane? Was she completely nuts? Did she have the slightest idea what she was asking me to do?
Evidently she did, since the next thing I knew Lars was standing there, and Grandmère and Rommel were gone.
Geez! Homework!!! Nobody said there was going to be homework.
And that’s not the worst of it. Panty hose? To school? I mean, the only girls who wear panty hose to school are girls like Lana Weinberger, and seniors, and people like that. You know. Show-offs. None of my friends wear panty hose.
And, I might add, none of my friends wear lipstick or nail polish or do their hair. Not for school, anyway.
But what choice did I have? Grandmère totally scared me, with her tattooed eyelids and all. I couldn’t NOT do what she said.
So what I did was, I borrowed a pair of my mom’s panty hose. She wears them whenever she has an ope
ning—and on dates with Mr. Gianini, I’ve noticed. I took a pair of her panty hose to school with me in my backpack. I didn’t have any fingernails to paint—according to Lilly, I am orally fixated; if it fits in my mouth, I’ll put it there—but I did borrow one of my mom’s lipsticks, too. And I tried some mousse I found in the medicine cabinet. It must have worked, since when Lilly got into the car this morning, she said, "Wow. Where’d you pick up the Jersey girl, Lars?"
Which I guess meant that my hair looked really big, like girls from New Jersey wear it when they come into Manhattan for a romantic dinner in Little Italy with their boyfriends.
So then, after my review session with Mr. G at the end of the day, I went into the girls’ room and put on the panty hose, the lipstick, and my loafers, which are too small and pinch my toes really bad. When I checked myself out in the mirror, I thought I didn’t look so bad. I didn’t think Grandmère would have any complaints.
I thought I was pretty slick, waiting to change until after school. I figured on a Friday afternoon there wouldn’t be anyone hanging around. Who wants to hang around school on a Friday?
I had forgotten, of course, about the Computer Club.
Everybody forgets about the Computer Club, even the people who belong to it. They don’t have any friends, except each other, and they never go on dates—only unlike me, I think this is by choice: No one at Albert Einstein is smart enough for them—except, again, for each other.
Anyway, I walked out of the girls’ room and ran smack into Lilly’s brother, Michael. He’s the Computer Club treasurer. He’s smart enough to be president, but he says he has no interest in being a figurehead.
"Christ, Thermopolis," he said, as I scrambled around, trying to pick up all the stuff I’d dropped—like my high-tops and socks and stuff—when I bumped into him. "What happened to you?"
I thought he meant why was I there so late. "You know I have to meet with Mr. Gianini every day after school because I’m flunking Alge—"
"I know that." Michael held up the lipstick that had exploded out of my backpack. "I mean what’s with the war paint?"
I took it away from him. "Nothing. Don’t tell Lilly."
"Don’t tell Lilly what?" I stood up, and he noticed the panty hose. "Jesus, Thermopolis. Where are you going?"
"Nowhere." Must I continuously be forced to lie all the time? I really wished he would go away. Plus a bunch of his computer nerd friends were standing there, staring at me like I was some new kind of pixel or something. It was making me pretty uncomfortable.
"Nobody goes nowhere looking like that." Michael shifted his laptop from one arm to the other, then got this funny look on his face. "Thermopolis, are you going out on a date?"
"What? No, I’m not going on a date!" I was completely shocked at the idea. A date? Me? I’m so sure! "I have to meet my grandmother!"
Michael didn’t look as if he believed me. "And do you usually wear lipstick and panty hose to meet your grandmother?"
I heard some discreet coughing, and looked down the hall. Lars was there by the doors, waiting for me.
I guess I could have stood there and explained that my grandmother had threatened me with bodily harm (well, practically) if I didn’t wear make up and nylons to meet her. But I sort of didn’t think he’d believe me. So I said, "Look, don’t tell Lilly, okay?"
Then I ran away.
I knew I was dead meat. There was no way Michael wasn’t going to tell his sister about seeing me coming out of the girls’ room after school in lipstick and panty hose. No way.
And Grandmère’s was HORRIBLE. She said the lipstick I had on made me look like a poulet. At least that’s what I thought she said, and I couldn’t figure out why she thought I looked like a chicken. But just now I looked up poulet in my English-French dictionary, and it turns out poulet can also mean "prostitute"! My grandmother called me a hooker!
Geez! Whatever happened to nice grandmothers, who bake brownies for you and tell you how precious you are? It’s just my luck I get one who has tattooed eyeliner and tells me I look like a hooker.
And she said that the panty hose I had on were the wrong color. How could they be the wrong color? They’re panty hose color! Then she made me practice sitting down so my underwear didn’t show between my legs for like two hours!
I’m thinking about calling Amnesty International. This has to constitute torture.
And when I gave her my essay on the ten women I admire most, she read it and then ripped it up into little pieces! I am not even kidding!
I couldn’t help screaming, "Grandmère, why’d you do that?" and she went, all calmly, "These are not the sort of women you should be admiring. You should be admiring real women."
I asked Grandmère what she meant by "real women," because all of the women on my list are real. I mean, Madonna might have had a little plastic surgery, but she’s still real.
But Grandmère says real women are Princess Grace and Coco Chanel. I pointed out to her that Princess Diana is on my list, and you know what she said? She says she thinks Princess Diana was a "twink"! That’s what she called her. A "twink."
Only she pronounced it "tweenk."
Geez!
After we’d rehearsed sitting for an hour, Grandmère said she had to go and take a bath, since she’s having dinner tonight with some prime minister. She told me to be at the Plaza tomorrow no later than ten o’clock—A.M. 10 A.M.!
"Grandmère," I said. "Tomorrow is Saturday."
"I know it."
"But Grandmère," I said. "Saturdays are when I help my friend Lilly film her TV show—"
But Grandmère asked me which was more important, Lilly’s TV show or the well-being of the people of Genovia, who, in case you didn’t know, number in the 50,000 range.
I guess 50,000 people are more important than one episode of Lilly Tells It Like It Is. Still, it’s going to be tough explaining to Lilly why I won’t be there to hold the camera when she confronts Mr. and Mrs. Ho, owners of Ho’s Deli, across the street from Albert Einstein, about their unfair pricing policies. Lilly has discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Ho give significant discounts to the Asian students who go to Albert Einstein, but no discounts at all to the Caucasian, African American, Latino, or Arab students. Lilly discovered this yesterday after play rehearsal when she went to buy ginkgo biloba puffs and Ling Su, in front of her in line, bought the same thing. But Mrs. Ho charged her (Lilly) five whole cents more than Ling Su for the same product.
And then when Lilly complained, Mrs. Ho pretended like she couldn’t speak English, even though she must speak some English, or why else would her mini-TV behind the counter always be tuned to Judge Judy?
Lilly has decided to secretly videotape the Hos to gather evidence of their blatantly preferential treatment of Asian Americans. She’s calling for a school-wide boycott of Ho’s Deli.
The thing is, I think Lilly’s making a really big deal about five cents. But Lilly says it’s the principle of the thing, and that maybe if people had made a big deal about how the Nazis smashed up Jewish people’s store windows on Kristalnacht they wouldn’t have ended up putting so many people in ovens.
I don’t know. The Hos aren’t exactly Nazis. They’re very nice to the little cat they’ve raised from a kitten to chase rats away from the chicken wings in the salad bar.
Maybe I’m not too sorry about missing the taping tomorrow.
But I am sorry Grandmère tore up my list of the ten women I admire most. I thought it was nice. When I got home, I printed it out again, just because it made me so mad, her tearing it up like that. I put a copy in this book.
And after carefully reviewing my copy of the Renaldo-Thermopolis Compromise, I see nothing about princess lessons. Something is going to have to be done about this. I have been leaving messages for Dad all night, but he doesn’t answer. Where is he?
Lilly isn’t home, either. Maya says the Moscovitzes went to Great Shanghai for dinner as a family, in order to grow to understand one another better as human beings.
I wish Lilly would hurry up and get home and call me back. I don’t want her to think I’m in any way against her groundbreaking investigation into Ho’s Deli. I just want to tell her the reason I won’t be able to be there is because I have to spend the day with my grandmother.
I hate my life.
* * *
The Ten Women I Admire Most in the Whole World
by Mia Thermopolis
Madonna. Madonna Ciccone revolutionized the fashion world with her iconoclastic sense of style, sometimes offending people who are not very open-minded—for instance, her rhinestone cross earrings, which made many Christian groups ban her CDs—or who have no sense of humor—like Pepsi, which didn’t like it when she danced in front of some burning crosses. It was because she wasn’t afraid to make people like the Pope mad that Madonna became one of the richest female entertainers in the world, paving the way for women performers everywhere by showing them that it is possible to be sexy onstage and smart off it.
Princess Diana. Even though she is dead, Princess Diana is one of my favorite women of all time. She, too, revolutionized the fashion world by refusing to wear the ugly old hats that her mother-in-law told her to wear, and instead wore Halston and Bill Blass. Also she visited a lot of really sick people, even though nobody made her do it, and some people, like her husband, even made fun of her for doing it. The night Princess Diana died I unplugged the TV and said I would never watch it again, since media was what killed her. But then I regretted it the next morning when I couldn’t watch Japanese Anime on the Sci-Fi channel, because unplugging the TV scrambled our cable box.
Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary Rodham Clinton totally recognized that her thick ankles were detracting from her image as a serious politician, and so she started wearing pants. Also, even though everybody was talking bad about her all the time for not leaving her husband, who was going around having sex with people behind her back, she pretended like nothing was going on and went on running the country, just like she’d always done, which is how a president should behave.