The Princess Diaries I

by Meg Cabot

  Then, just when I thought I couldn’t stand it another minute, that I was going to DIE of embarrassment right there on the steps of Albert Einstein High School, Josh lifted up his head, waved to the reporters, opened the doors to the school, and pushed me inside.

  Where, I swear to God, every single person I knew was standing, looking at us.

  I am not kidding. There were Tina and her date from Trinity, Dave, looking at me in a sort of shocked way. There were Lilly and Boris, and for once Boris hadn’t tucked in anything that wasn’t supposed to be tucked. In fact, he almost looked handsome, in a geeky, musical genius kind of way. And Lilly, in a beautiful white dress with spangles all over it, and white roses in her hair. And there were Shameeka and Ling Su with their dates, and a bunch of other people I probably knew but didn’t recognize out of their school uniforms, all looking at me with the same sort of expression Tina was wearing, one of total and complete astonishment.

  And there was Mr. G, standing by the ticket booth in front of the doors to the cafeteria, where the dance was being held, looking more astonished than anybody.

  Except maybe me. I would have to say, out of everybody there, I was the person in the most shock. I mean, Josh Richter HAD just kissed me. JOSH RICHTER had just KISSED me. Josh Richter had just kissed ME.

  Did I mention that he’d kissed me ON THE LIPS?

  Oh, and that he did it in front of reporters from TEEN PEOPLE?

  So I’m standing there, and everybody is looking at me, and I could still hear the reporters yelling outside, and inside the cafeteria I could hear the thump, thump, thump of the sound system as it ground out some hip-hop, a tribute to our Latino student population, and these thoughts are moving really sluggishly through my head, these thoughts that are saying:

  He set you up.

  He only asked you out so he could get his picture in the paper.

  He’s the one who notified the press that you’d be here tonight.

  He probably only broke up with Lana just so he could tell his friends he’s dating a girl worth three hundred million dollars. He never even noticed you until your picture was on the cover of the Post. Lilly was right: That day in Bigelows, he WAS only suffering from a synaptic breakdown when he smiled at you. He probably thinks his chances of getting into Harvard or whatever are way enhanced by the fact that he’s the princess of Genovia’s boyfriend.

  And like a big idiot, I fell for it.

  Great. Just great.

  Lilly says I’m not assertive enough. Her parents say I have a tendency to internalize everything and fear confrontation.

  My mom says the same thing. That’s why she gave me this book, in the hopes that what I won’t tell her, I’ll at least get out into the open somehow.

  If it hadn’t turned out that I’m a princess, maybe I might still be all that stuff. You know, unassertive, fearful of confrontation, an internalizer. I probably wouldn’t have done what I did next.

  Which was turn to Josh and ask, "Why did you do that?"

  He was busy patting himself down, trying to find the dance tickets to hand to the sophomores who were manning the ticket table. "Do what?"

  "Kiss me like that, in front of everybody."

  He found the tickets in his wallet. "I don’t know," he said. "Didn’t you hear them? They were yelling at me to kiss you. So I did. Why?"

  "Because I didn’t appreciate it."

  "You didn’t appreciate it?" Josh looked confused. "You mean you didn’t like it?"

  "Yes," I said. "That’s exactly what I mean. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. Because I know you didn’t kiss me because you like me. You just kissed me because I’m the princess of Genovia."

  Josh looked at me like he thought I was crazy.

  "That’s crazy," he said. "I like you. I like you a lot."

  I said, "You can’t like me a lot. You don’t even know me. That’s why I thought you asked me out. So you could get to know me better. But you haven’t tried to get to know me at all. You just wanted to get your picture on Extra."

  He laughed at that, but I noticed he didn’t look me in the eye when he said, "What do you mean, I don’t even know you? Of course I know you."

  "No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have ordered me a steak for dinner."

  I heard a murmur go around through all of my friends. I guess they recognized the seriousness of Josh’s mistake, even if he didn’t. He heard them, too, so when he replied, he was talking to them, too. "So I ordered the girl a steak," he said, with his arms open in a so-sue-me sort of way. "That’s a crime? It was filet mignon, for God’s sake."

  Lilly said, in her meanest voice, "She’s a vegetarian, you sociopath."

  This information didn’t seem to bother Josh very much. He just shrugged and went, "Oops, my bad."

  Then he turned to me and said, "Ready to slide?"

  But I had no intention of sliding with Josh. I had no intention of doing anything with Josh, ever again. I couldn’t believe, after what I’d just said to him, he thought I’d still want to. The guy really was a sociopath. How could I ever have thought he’d seen into my soul? How???

  Disgusted, I did the only thing a girl can be expected to do under those circumstances:

  I turned my back on him and walked out.

  Only, since of course I couldn’t go back outside—not if I didn’t want Teen People to get a nice close-up of me crying—my only recourse was to walk out into the girls’ room.

  It finally registered on Josh that I was ditching him. By that time, all of his friends had shown up, and they came tumbling through the doors just as Josh said, sounding totally peeved, "Jesus! It was just a kiss!"

  I whirled around. "It wasn’t just a kiss," I said. I was getting really mad. "Maybe that’s how you wanted it to look, like it was just a kiss. But you and I both know what it really was: A media event. And one that you’ve been planning since you saw me in the Post. Well, thank you, Josh, but I can get my own publicity. I don’t need you."

  Then, after holding out my hand to Lars for my journal, I took it and stalked into the girls’ room. Which is where I am now, writing this.

  God! Can you BELIEVE that? I mean, I ask you: My first kiss—my first kiss ever—and next week it’s going to be in every teen magazine in the country. Probably even some international magazines will pick it up, like Majesty magazine, which follows the lives of all the young royals in Great Britain and Monaco. They ran a whole article on the wardrobe of Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, once, rating each one of her outfits on a scale of one to ten. They called it "Out of the Closet." I don’t suppose it will be too long before Majesty magazine starts following me around, rating my wardrobe—and boyfriends—too. I wonder what the caption under the picture of me and Josh will be. "Young Royal in Love"?

  Excuse me, but ew.

  And the kicker of it all is that I am totally NOT in love with Josh Richter. I mean, it would have been nice—Who am I kidding? It would have been GREAT—to have a boyfriend. Sometimes I think there really is something wrong with me, that I don’t have one.

  But the thing is, I would rather not have a boyfriend at all than have one who is only using me for my money or the fact that my father is a prince or for any reason, really, except that he likes me for me, and nothing else.

  Of course, now that everyone knows I’m a princess, it’s going to be kind of hard to tell which guys like me for me and which guys like me for my tiara. But at least I realized the truth about Josh before things went on too long.

  How could I have ever liked him? He’s such a user. He totally used me! He purposefully hurt Lana and then tried to use me. And I played right into his hands like the stupid sap that I am.

  What am I going to do? When my dad sees that photograph, he is going to FLIP OUT. There is no way I will ever be able to explain that it wasn’t my fault. Maybe if I’d punched Josh in the stomach in front of all those cameras, maybe then my dad would believe I was an innocent bystander. . . .

  But
probably not.

  I will never be allowed out of the house with a boy again, ever, for the rest of my natural life.

  Uh-oh. I see shoes outside my stall. Somebody is talking to me.

  It’s Tina. Tina wants to know if I’m all right. Somebody is with her.

  Oh my God, I recognize those feet! It’s Lilly! Lilly and Tina both want to know if I’m all right!

  Lilly is actually speaking to me again. Not criticizing me or complaining about my behavior. She is actually speaking to me in a friendly manner. She’s saying through the stall door that she’s sorry for laughing at my hair and that she knows she’s controlling and that she suffers from a borderline authoritarian personality disorder, and she says she’s going to make a concerted effort to stop telling everyone, especially me, what to do.

  Wow! Lilly is admitting she did something wrong! I can’t believe it! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!

  She and Tina want me to come out and hang out with them. But I told them I don’t want to. It would be too awkward, all of them with dates and me by myself like a big dope.

  And then Lilly goes, "Oh, that’s okay. Michael’s here. He’s been hanging around by himself like a big dope all night."

  Michael Moscovitz came to a school event??? I can’t believe it!! He never goes anywhere, except to like lectures in quantum physics and stuff!!

  I have got to see this for myself. I am going out there right now.

  More later.

  Sunday, October 19

  I just woke up from the strangest dream.

  In my dream, Lilly and I weren’t fighting anymore; she and Tina had become friends; Boris Pelkowski actually turned out to be not so bad when you got him away from his violin; Mr. Gianini said he was raising my nine week grade from an F to a D; I slow-danced with Michael Moscovitz; and Iran bombed Afghanistan, so there wasn’t a single picture of me and Josh kissing in any newspaper on the newsstand, since all the papers were filled with photos of war carnage.

  But it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream at all, none of it! It had all really happened!

  Because I woke up this morning with something wet on my face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that I was lying in the spare bed in Lilly’s room, and her brother’s sheltie was licking me all over my face. I mean it. I have dog spit all over me.

  And I don’t even care! Pavlov can drool all over me if he wants to! I have my best friend back! I’m not going to flunk out of ninth grade! My dad isn’t going to kill me for kissing Josh Richter!

  Oh, and I think Michael Moscovitz might like me!

  I can hardly write for happiness.

  Little did I know when I came out of the girls’ room last night with Lilly and Tina that all this happiness lay in store for me. I was morbidly depressed—yes, morbidly. Isn’t that a good word? I learned it from Lilly—over what had happened with Josh.

  But when I came out of the girls’ room, Josh was gone. Lilly told me later that after I publicly humiliated him and then went storming off into the bathroom, Josh went on into the dance, not looking as if he cared too much. Lilly isn’t sure what happened after that, because Mr. G asked her and Tina to go and check on me (wasn’t that sweet of him?), but I have a feeling Lars might have used one of his special nerve-paralyzing holds on Josh, because the next time I saw him, Josh was slumped over at the Pacific Islander display table with his forehead resting on a model of Krakatoa. He didn’t move all night, either, but I just thought that was because of all the champagne he’d had to drink.

  Anyway, Lilly and Tina and I joined Boris and Dave—who is really nice, even if he does go to Trinity—and Shameeka and her boyfriend, Allan, and Ling-Su and her date, Clifford, at this table they had snagged. It was the Pakistani table, with a display sponsored by the Economics Club, detailing how the market for maunds (a Pakistani unit of measurement) of rice was falling. We moved some of the maunds and sat there anyway, right on the tabletop, so we could see everything.

  And then Michael suddenly appeared out of nowhere, looking crescent fresh—isn’t that a funny expression? I learned it from Michael—in the tux his mom made him get for his cousin Steve’s bar mitzvah. Michael really didn’t have anyone else to hang out with, since Principal Gupta ruled that the Internet is not a culture and therefore cannot have its own table, and so the Computer Club boycotted the Cultural Diversity Dance on principle.

  But Michael didn’t seem to care what the Computer Club thought, and he’s the treasurer! He sat down next to me and asked if I was all right, and then we had fun for a while CracKing jokes about how all the cheerleaders sure don’t practice any cultural diversity, since they were all dressed in practically the same gown, a slinky black number by Donna Karan. Then somebody started talking about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and whether or not there’s caffeine in replicator coffee, and Michael insisted that the matter used to make the things that come out of the replicator is from refuse, which means maybe when you order an ice cream sundae it might be made out of urine, but with the germs and impurities extracted. And we were all getting kind of grossed out when the music changed, and a slow song came on, and everybody left the table to go and dance.

  Except for me and Michael, of course. We just sat there amid the maunds of rice.

  Which wasn’t too bad, actually, since Michael and I never run out of things to talk about—unlike me and Josh. We kept on arguing about the replicator, and then we moved on to who was the more effective leader, Captain Kirk or Captain Picard, when Mr. Gianini came over and asked me if I was okay.

  I said of course, and that was when Mr. G told me he was glad to hear it, and, by the way, based on my latest scores on the practice sheets he’d been giving me evey day, I had brought my F in Algebra up to a D, for which he congratulated me, and he urged me to keep up the hard work.

  But I credited my improved math performance to Michael, who taught me to stop writing my Algebra notes in my journal, not be so messy with my columns, and to cross things out when I borrow during subtraction. Michael got all embarrassed and claimed not to have had anything to do with it, but Mr. G didn’t hear him since he had to hurry off and dissuade a group of Goths from embarking upon a demonstration over the unfair exclusion of a table dedicated to Satan worshipers by the event organizers.

  Then a fast song came on and everybody came back, and we sat around and talked about Lilly’s show, which Tina Hakim Baba is now going to be producer of, since we found out she gets $50 a week in allowance (she is going to start borrowing teen romances from the library instead of buying them new so that she can use all of her funds for promoting Lilly Tells It Like It Is). Lilly asked if I’d mind being the topic for next week’s show, titled "The New Monarchy: Royals Who Make a Difference." I gave her exclusive rights to my first public interview if she’d promise to ask me about my feelings on the meat industry.

  Then another slow song came on, and everybody went to go and dance to it. Michael and I were left sitting amid the rice again, and I was about to ask him who he’d choose to spend eternity with if nuclear armaggedon wiped out the rest of the population, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, when he asked me if I wanted to dance!

  I was so surprised, I said sure without even thinking about it. And then the next thing I knew, I was dancing my first dance with a boy who wasn’t my dad!

  And it was a slow one!

  Slow dancing is strange. It isn’t even dancing, really. It’s more like standing there with your arms around the other person, moving from one foot to the other in time to the music. And I guess you aren’t supposed to talk—at least, nobody else around us was talking. I guess I could sort of see why, since you’re so busy feeling stuff it’s hard to think of anything to say. I mean, Michael smelled so good—like Ivory soap—and felt so good—the dress Grandmère picked out for me was pretty and everything, but I was kind of cold in it, so it was nice to stand close to Michael, who was so warm—that it was next to impossible to say anything.

  I guess Michael felt the same way, bec
ause even though when we were sitting there on the table with all the rice neither of us ever shut up, we had so much to talk about, when we were dancing together neither of us said a word.

  But the minute the song was over Michael started talking again, asking me if I wanted some Thai iced tea from the Thai Culture table, or maybe some edamame from the Japanese Anime Club’s table. For somebody who’d never been to a single school event—aside from Computer Club meetings—Michael sure was making up for lost time in his enthusiasm over being at this one.

  And that was how the rest of the night went: We sat around and talked during the fast songs and danced during the slow ones.

  And you know, to tell the truth, I couldn’t say which I liked better, talking to Michael or dancing with him. They were both so . . . interesting.

  In different ways, of course.

  When the dance was over we all piled into the limo Mr. Hakim Baba sent to pick up Tina and Dave (the news vans had all left by then, since the story about the bombing had broken; I suppose they went to go stake out the Iranian embassy). I called my mom on the limo cell phone and told her where I was and asked if I could spend the night at Lilly’s, since that’s where we were all headed. She said yes without asking any questions, which led me to believe that she’d already talked to Mr. G and that he’d filled her in on the night’s events. I wonder if he told her he’d raised my F to a D.

  You know, he could have given me a D plus. I have been nothing but supportive of his relationship with my mother. That kind of loyalty ought to be rewarded.

  Dr. and Dr. Moscovitz seemed kind of surprised when all ten of us—twelve, if you count Lars and Wahim—showed up at their door. They were especially surprised to see Michael; they hadn’t realized he’d left his room. But they let us take over the living room, where we played End of the World until Lilly’s and Michael’s dad finally came out in his pajamas and said everybody had to go home, he had an early appointment with his tai chi instructor.