Party Princess pd-7

by Meg Cabot

  I knew I’d be inundated with e-mails the minute I turned my computer on. And I was right.

  From Lilly:

  WOMYNRULE: Does your grandmother realize that the subject matter of her little play is practically rated PG-13? I mean, it contains attempted rape, excessive alcohol consumption, murder, violence—about the only thing it DOESN’T have in it is bad language, and that’s only because it takes place in the year 568. And could you believe how off-key Amber Cheeseman was? I totally blew her out of the water. If I don’t get the part of Rosagunde, it will be a travesty of justice. I was MADE to play this role.

  From Tina:

  ILUVROMANCE: That was fun today! I really hope I get the part of Rosagunde. I know I won’t, because Lilly was so good at the audition, the part will totally go to her. But it would be sooo cool to play a princess. I mean, not for you, since you play a princess in real life and everything. But for someone like me, I mean. I know Lilly will get it. Still, I hope I don’t get the part of Alboin’s mistress. I wouldn’t want to play a mistress. Also, I don’t think my dad would let me.

  From Ling Su:

  PAINTURGURL: Okay, clearly Lilly is going to get the part of Rosagunde, but if I get stuck with the part of the mistress, I am going to scream! Asian actresses are always being relegated to roles where they are forced to play sexual subservients. Or, worse, just plain subservients… like Rosagunde’s maid. I refuse to be typecast! I hope she didn’t think my performance of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” was too strident. Also, is your grandma going to need help with the sets? Because I paint totally good castles and stuff.

  From Perin:

  INDIGOGRLFAN: Wasn’t that fun today? I know I wasn’t very good. I was just so surprised, you know? I mean, that your grandmother had me read for the part of Gustav instead of Rosagunde. Especially after I sang T.A.T.U.’s “They’re Not Gonna Get Us.” But it must have been because there were so many more girls than boys auditioning. You don’t think she thinks I’m a boy, do you???

  From Boris:

  JOSHBELL2: Mia, do you think your grandmother would be willing to add a scene to her play where Gustav takes out a violin and serenades Rosagunde? Because I really think that would add some emotional depth to the production, should I be the person cast to play Gustav. Plus, it would add historical accuracy, since the rebec, the violin’s predecessor, dates from 5000 BC. I know Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” wasn’t the most inspired choice for my audition song, but Tina said she didn’t think your grandmother would like the only other song I’d prepared, Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet.”

  From Kenny:

  E=MC2: Mia, I’m troubled by the suggestion your grandmother made as I was sitting back down after my audition piece that whoever plays the part of Gustav the smith ought at least to be capable of growing facial hair. It almost sounded as if she were inferring that I myself am not capable of this, when the truth is that I DO have facial hair, it is just very fair. I hope your grandmother is not going to be prejudiced against blonds in her casting of the male roles.

  From Shameeka:

  BEYONCE_IS_ME: All anybody can talk about are those auditions today! Sounds like Lilly is going to get the lead (what else is new?). Wish I could have been there. Is it true the Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili was there????

  Seriously. It’s like they’ve forgotten we have other things to worry about besides who is going to be cast as Gustav and Rosagunde.

  Like, for instance, the fact that we are still broke.

  I guess it doesn’t really matter so much to them, since they are not the ones in charge.

  One thing I will say for Grandmère’s choice of plays: She could not have chosen a piece that more fully illustrates the problems of the royal, in that, ultimately, you are all alone when it comes to making decisions of state. As it did for Rosagunde in that bedroom fifteen hundred years ago, the buck, for me, stops here.

  This is all too much for one lone teen to bear. I need someone to help me, someone to tell me what the right thing is to do. Should I just come clean with Amber, confess my sin, and get my whupping over with?

  Or is there still a chance I can get the money before she finds out?

  It’s times like these when I realize how woefully inadequate my familial support network really is. I mean, I can’t turn to my mother for advice in this matter. She is the person who was responsible for our cable going out once a month because she forgot to pay the bill—at least before Mr. G moved in.

  And I can’t turn to my dad. If he finds out how badly I’ve screwed up my STUDENT government budget, he’s not going to be exactly jazzed about turning me loose on our COUNTRY’s budget. The last thing I need right now is a series of lectures from Dad on cost-effective municipal planning.

  I already told Grandmère, and you can see the good THAT did. Who else is there for me to turn to, except Michael, of course?

  And we all know how helpful HE was in the matter.

  Speaking of Michael, the only e-mail I got that was unrelated to today’s Braid! audition was the one I got from him. And that’s just because he doesn’t even go to AEHS anymore, and didn’t know anything about what was going on:

  SKINNERBX: Hey, Thermopolis! How’s it going? I was wondering if you wanted to come over tomorrow night for a sci-fi film fest. I have to screen a bunch of them for my History of Dystopic Science Fiction in Film elective, and since I’m having the party Saturday night, I figured I should watch them while I had the chance. Want to join me?

  It would have been inappropriate, of course, for me to say what I WANTED to say, which was: Michael, you are my lifeblood, my reason for living, the only thing that keeps me sane in the tempest-tossed sea of life, and I would like nothing better than to screen a bunch of dystopic sci-fi flicks with you tomorrow night.

  Because it’s lame to say that kind of stuff in an e-mail.

  But I still thought it, in my head.

  FTLOUIE: I’d love to.

  SKINNERBX: Excellent. We can order in from Number One Noodle Son.

  FTLOUIE: And I can make some dip.

  SKINNERBX: Dip? What for?

  FTLOUIE: For the party! Don’t people serve dip at parties?

  SKINNERBX: Oh. Yeah. But I just figured I’d buy some Saturday afternoon, or whatever.

  I could see that my effort to appear enthusiastic about Michael’s party had fallen completely flat. But I persevered nonetheless, because I couldn’t let him know, you know, how NOT excited I was about it.

  FTLOUIE: Homemade dip is always better. I can make it and leave it overnight in the refrigerator, and that way it will be all gelled and everything for the party. Which I’m so excited about coming to.

  SKINNERBX: Um. Okay. Whatever you want. See you tomorrow then.

  FTLOUIE: Can’t wait!

  Actually, though, I CAN wait… both for the party AND the dystopic sci-fi film festival. Because those movies Michael has to watch for that class of his are MAJOR bummers. I mean, Soylent Green? Excuse me, but gross.

  Plus a lot of them have very scary parts, and scary movies have completely screwed with my psyche. Seriously. I think scary movies are responsible for half, if not more, of my neuroses.

  TOP 20 WAYS SCARY MOVIES

  HAVE MESSED ME UP:

  1) I can’t see chairs pulled away from the table without thinking of Poltergeist and having to push them back in. Ditto drawers that have been pulled out.

  2) I can’t pass those red-and-white smokestacks across from the FDR without thinking about poor Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory.

  3) I can’t go over a bridge without thinking of the Mothman Prophecies. Ditto see a chemical plant.

  4) After seeing Blair Witch, I can no longer go

  a) into wooded areas

  b) camping

  c) into any dark basements.

  Not that I would have done any of those things anyway. But now I REALLY won’t.

  5) For a long time I couldn’t look at the TV without thinking
that a girl might crawl out of it and kill me like in The Ring and The Ring 2.

  6) Every time I see an alley, I expect there to be a dead body in it. But that’s probably from too many episodes of Law and Order, not the movies.

  7) Don’t even talk to me about boiling pots of water on the stove (Whitey the rabbit from Fatal Attraction).

  8) Little white dogs = Precious from Silence of the Lambs.

  9) Any supermodern-looking, windowless building in the middle of nowhere is the place where they harvest the organs of people in comas from the movie Coma.

  10) Cornfields = the movie Signs, and we’re all going to die.

  11) After Titanic, I will never, ever, ever go on a cruise.

  12) Whenever I see an oil tanker on the road, I know I’m going to die, because whenever you see one in the movies, it explodes.

  13) If a semi is tailing us, I always assume it’s trying to kill us, like in The Duel.

  14) I can’t go through the Holland Tunnel without thinking it’s going to leak like in Daylight.

  15) I don’t know if I will ever be able to have children thanks to Rosemary’s Baby. I will definitely never live in the Dakota. I don’t know how Yoko Ono stands it.

  16) I’ll never adopt, either, thanks to The Good Son.

  17) I will never get anesthesia for anything but non-elective surgery because of She Woke Up Pregnant.

  18) After talking at length to several elevator repairmen, I know now that unless someone places an incendiary device on top of the elevator, like in Speed, it is mathematically impossible for all the cables supporting it to snap at once. Still. You never know.

  19) Thanks to Jaws I will never set foot in the ocean again.

  20) The call is ALWAYS coming from inside the house.

  See? I have been SCREWED UP by the movies. The whole reason I hate parties, probably, is because of how traumatized I was over Broken Lizard’s Club Dread, which I watched with Michael thinking it was going to be a comedy, like Super Troopers. Only it turned out to be a horror film about young people being killed at a tropical resort, usually during a party.

  Michael doesn’t realize the MAJOR sacrifice I am making, just by agreeing to watch whatever it is he’s going to make me watch tomorrow night.

  In fact, probably one of the major reasons I haven’t transcended my ego and achieved self-actualization yet is because of the psychological scarring I have received from the movies. I wonder if Dr. Carl Jung knew about this when he invented self-actualization. Or did they even HAVE movies back when he was alive?

  From the desk of

  Her Royal Highness

  Princess Amelia Mignonette

  Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo

  Dear Dr. Carl Jung,

  Hi. I know you’re still dead and all, but I was just wondering—when you were inventing the whole self-actualization thing, did you take into account the way movies mess people up? Because it is very difficult to transcend the ego when you are constantly thinking about things like oil tankers blowing up on the highway.

  And what about teenagers? We have special concerns and insecurities that adults simply don’t seem to possess. I mean, I have never seen a single adult worrying about a valedictorian possibly taking out a death warrant on her.

  And what about boyfriends? There isn’t a single mention of boyfriends or even romance on branches of the Jungian tree of self-actualization. I understand that in order to reap the fruits of life (health, joy, contentment), you must start at the roots (compassion, charity, trust).

  But can you really trust your boyfriend when, for instance, he is planning on having a party to which he is inviting college girls, who often smoke and seem to refer routinely to Nietzsche?

  I’m not trying to criticize you or anything. I just really want to know. I mean, did you ever see Coma? It was really freaking scary. And I imagine that if you ever saw it, you might revise some of your requirements for transcending the ego. Like, for instance, the whole trust thing. I mean, I know it’s good to trust your doctor—up to a point.

  But do you ever REALLY know that he’s not purposefully going to put you in a coma in order to harvest your organs and sell them to some really rich dude in Bolivia?

  No. You don’t. So see? There’s a flaw in your whole theory.

  So. What am I supposed to do now?

  Still your friend,

  Mia Thermopolis

  Friday, March 5, the limo on the way to school

  If Lilly comments one more time on how her interpretation of Rosagunde is going to make Julia Roberts’s portrayal of Erin Brockovich look like community theater, my head is going to spin off, shoot through the sunroof, and land in the East River.

  Friday, March 5, Homeroom

  They just announced over the intercom that the cast list for Braid! will go up outside the administrative offices at noon.

  Just my luck. You could cut the tension around here with a knife. Not just the nervousness over who is going to get what part, either.

  But the Drama Club is hopping mad that someone is putting on a musical to rival theirs. They are claiming they are going to contact the writers of Hair and tell them what Grandmère is doing—you know, because her musical’s name is so close to theirs.

  I hope they do.

  Although, if Grandmère gets sued and stops the show, I am back to selling candles again to raise the five grand I need.

  On the other hand, there is no guarantee a musical version of the story of my ancestress Rosagunde could even raise five thousand dollars in ticket sales in the first place. I mean, who would pay money to go to a show written by my grandma? She once gave a speech at a benefit to raise money for the Genovian version of the ASPCA about how the kindest thing you can do for an animal is immortalize it forever by skinning it and using its pelt as a lovely shrug or throw for a divan.

  So you see where I am coming from about this.

  Friday, March 5, PE

  Lana just asked me if I had her invitations yet. She asked me this as I was stepping into my underwear after my post-volleyball shower, which is about as vulnerable a position a person can be in.

  I said I hadn’t had a chance to get them yet, but that I would.

  Lana then looked down at my Jimmy Neutron underwear and went, “Whatever, freak,” and walked away before I got a chance to explain to her that I wear Jimmy Neutron underwear because Jimmy reminds me a bit of my boyfriend.

  The genius part. Not the hair.

  But I guess maybe it’s just as well. I highly doubt Lana would understand—even if she DID used to wear her boyfriend’s soccer shorts under her school skirt.

  Friday, March 5, U.S. Economics

  Demand = How much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers.

  Supply = How much the market can offer.

  Equilibrium = When supply and demand are equal, the economy is said to be in equilibrium. The amount of goods being supplied is exactly the same as the amount of goods being demanded.

  Disequilibrium = This occurs whenever the price or quantity is not equal to demand/supply.

  (So, basically, the student government of AEHS is currently in disequilibrium due to our funds (zero) not being equal to the demand for one night’s rental of Alice Tully Hall ($5,728.00).)

  Alfred Marshall, author of The Principles of Economics (circa 1890): “Economics is on one side the study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.”

  Huh. So that sort of makes economics a SOCIAL science. Like psychology. Because it isn’t really about numbers. It’s about PEOPLE, and what they are willing to spend—or do—to get what they want.

  Like Lana, for instance. You know, how she was going to rat me out to Amber if I didn’t get her those invitations to Grandmère’s party?

  That was a classic example of supply (I had the supply) versus demand (her demand that I give her what she wanted).

  All of which leads me to believe that it’s entirely possible Lana Weinberge
r isn’t self-actualized at all:

  She’s simply really good at economics!

  Friday, March 5, English

  One more period until the cast list goes up! Oh, I hope Boris gets the part of Gustav! He wants it so badly!

  I hope he gets it, too, Tina! I hope everyone gets the parts they want.

  What part do YOU want, Mia?

  Me???? Nothing!!! I didn’t even submit a photo or a form, remember? I stink at that kind of thing. Acting and stuff, I mean.

  Don’t put yourself down like that! Your Ciara imitation has gotten really EXCELLENT. And I thought you were really good as Rosagunde! Don’t you want the part just a little bit?

  No, really. I’m a writer, not an actress. Remember??? I want to WRITE the things the people onstage say. Well, not really, because there’s no actual money in playwrighting. But you get what I mean.

  Oh. Right. That makes sense.

  Well, all I can say is, if I don’t get the part of Rosagunde, we’ll all know it’s because of the N word.

  Nude scene???? When did you do a nude scene????

  No, you idiot. NEPOTISM. Favoritism shown to a family member.

  But that won’t happen because Mia didn’t really audition and doesn’t even WANT a part. So you should be fine, Lilly! Gosh, I hope we all get the parts we want—even if that means NO part!

  I’ll second that!

  Friday, March 5, Lunch

  CAST LIST FOR:

  Albert Einstein High School’s

  Alternative Spring Musical

  Braid!

  Chorus….….…….

  Amber Cheeseman, Julio Juarez, Margaret Lee, Eric Patel, Lauren Pembroke, Robert Sherman, Ling Su Wong

  Rosagunde’s father…..

  Kenneth Showalter

  Rosagunde’s maid…..

  Tina Hakim Baba

  King of Italy….…….

  Perin Thomas

  Alboin….….….….

  Boris Pelkowski

  Alboin’s mistress….

  Lilly Moscovitz

  Gustav….….….….

  John Paul Reynolds-Abernathy IV

  Rosagunde….…….