Party Princess pd-7

by Meg Cabot

  Though the chances of me ever losing Fat Louie are slim to none, since he’s way too heavy to carry around on a little pillow the way Paris carries Tinkerbell. Besides which, if I even tried something like that, he’d claw my face off.

  Monday, March 8, Homeroom

  So this morning I “borrowed” my mom’s credit card again and had one of those giant cookies sent to Michael. Only this time I made sure to send it to his dorm address. I am having the cookie makers write the word, “Sorry” in frosting on a 12-inch chocolate-chocolate chip.

  I realize sending a cookie—even a 12-inch one with the word “Sorry” written on it in frosting—is a woefully inadequate way of expressing one’s remorse for sexy dancing with another guy in front of one’s boyfriend.

  But I can’t afford to get Michael what he really wants, which is a ride on the space shuttle.

  After I ordered the cookie, I walked out of my room and found Rocky hanging on to fistfuls of Fat Louie’s fur and shrieking, “Kee! Kee! Kee!”

  Poor Fat Louie looked as if he had just swallowed a sock.

  But really what he had swallowed was his impulse to slash my baby brother to ribbons. Fat Louie is such a good cat, he was just LETTING Rocky hang on to him.

  But that didn’t mean he didn’t have a look of naked panic on his big orange face. I could tell that in ten more seconds, he’d have cracked like an eggshell.

  I came to the rescue, of course, and was like, “Mom! Can’t you watch your child for ONE SINGLE SOLITARY MINUTE?”

  But, of course, Mom hadn’t even had her coffee yet and so was incapable of controlling her kid, much less actually seeing anything that wasn’t happening unless it involved Diane Sawyer on the TV screen in front of her.

  She has no idea how lucky she is that I came along when I did. If Fat Louie HAD lost control of himself and let loose on Rocky, he could have sustained cat scratch fever and died. Rocky could have, I mean. Cat scratch fever is a super-serious and totally underreported disease. It can cause anorexia, if you aren’t careful.

  Not, in Rocky’s case, that anyone would notice, since he is roughly the size of your average four-year-old, even though he’s not even a year old yet.

  In fact, if Rocky, like Fat Louie, were orange, he’d look exactly like an Oompa Loompa.

  I seriously don’t see how between my baby brother, my friends, my parents, this princess thing, my grandmother, and this sexy-dancing business, I am ever going to achieve self-actualization.

  Monday, March 8, PE

  Lana came up to me as I was in the shower just now, and asked me where her tickets for the Aide de Ferme benefit were. I was so tired—and my forearms are so sore from strangling Boris, let alone smacking that stupid volleyball, even though I only did it once…the rest of the time, I just ducked when I saw it coming at me—I went, “Don’t get your panties in a wad, I submitted everyone’s name to my grandmother’s party organizer, okay? You and Trish will get in. You just have to show up.”

  She looked kind of startled. I guess I WAS kind of sharp.

  You know, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that actresses get a really bum rap. You know, the ones with the rumored “temperaments.” I mean, like Cameron Diaz and stuff. If she has HALF as much stress as I do, it’s no wonder she freaks out and kicks photographers and breaks their cameras and all.

  It just goes to show that what one person considers a “bad attitude” might actually just be total frustration over being pushed beyond the brink of one’s mental and physical endurance.

  That’s all I’m saying.

  Monday, March 8, U.S. Economics

  Elasticity

  Elasticity is the degree to which a demand or supply curve reacts to a change in price.

  Elasticity varies among products based on how essential that product is to the consumer.

  I am thinking I lost a lot of elasticity in Michael’s eyes after that whole sexy-dancing thing.

  Or maybe it was the beret.

  Monday, March 8, English

  Everyone is too tired to talk or even pass notes.

  Also, apparently none of us read O Pioneers over the weekend.

  Ms. Martinez says she is really disappointed in us.

  Get in line, Ms. M. Get in line.

  Monday, March 8, Lunch

  J.P. is sitting with us again. He is the only one at the table (who is in the play—I mean, musical—anyway) who isn’t catatonic with exhaustion. He’s even written a new poem. It goes:

  I always wanted

  To be in a play

  But the thrill of running lines

  Grows fainter by the day

  Now that I’m here,

  I just want a reversal

  I’m sick of blocking,

  Sick of rehearsal

  Someone please help us,

  Hear our pleas as they’re made

  Get us out of this mess—

  I mean, musical—Braid!

  Funny. I’d laugh, if my diaphragm didn’t hurt so much from lifting that stupid piano.

  Still no word from Michael. I know he’s got his History of Dystopic Sci-Fi in Film midterm right now. So that would explain why he hasn’t called to thank me for the cookie.

  It isn’t because he never wants to hear from or see me again, on account of the sexy dance.

  Probably.

  Monday, March 8, G & T

  Okay, she’s gone mental.

  Seriously. What’s WRONG with her? She expects us all to help her put her stupid literary magazine together—literally: She just wheeled in 3,700 pages that we are apparently supposed to collate and staple—but she still won’t pull “No More Corn!”

  “Lilly,” I said. “PLEASE. We know J.P. now. We’re FRIENDS with him. You can’t run the story. It’s just going to hurt his feelings! I mean, I have him KILL himself at the end.”

  “J.P. is a poet,” is all Lilly said back.

  “SO? WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?”

  “Poets kill themselves all the time. It’s a statistical fact. Amongst writers, poets have the shortest life expectancy. They are more likely to kill themselves than writers of prose or nonfiction. J.P. will probably agree with the way you’ve ended ‘No More Corn!’ since that’s the way he’s going to go someday anyway.”

  “Lilly!”

  But she won’t be swayed.

  I have refused to help collate and staple on ethical grounds, so she’s got Boris doing it.

  You can tell he doesn’t want to. He’s just too tired to practice his violin.

  You know, I’m starting to wonder if selling candles wouldn’t have been simpler than all this.

  Monday, March 8, Earth Science

  Kenny wasn’t too tired last night to do our lab worksheet.

  But he WAS too tired to not spill marinara sauce all over it.

  I recopied it for free. I’ve officially given up on Alfred Marshall. He may work for Grandmère and Lana, but he hasn’t done squat for me.

  Still no word from Michael. And his History of Dystopic Sci-Fi in Film midterm should be over by now.

  I think it’s official.

  He hates me.

  HOMEWORK

  PE: WASH GYM SHORTS!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT! U.S. Economics: Who knows? Too tired to care English: d/c (don’t care)

  French: d/c

  G&T: As if

  Geometry: d/c

  Earth Science: d/c (Kenny will tell me)

  Monday, March 8, limo on the way home from the Plaza

  I can’t believe it.

  Really. It’s too much. After all that—

  Okay. I have to get a grip. MUST. GET. A. GRIP.

  It started out innocently enough. We were all lying there on the ballroom floor, exhausted from our final run-through.

  Then somebody—I think it was Tina—went, “Um, Your Highness? My parents want to know where they can buy tickets to this show, so they can be sure to see it.”

  “All of your parents’ names have already been put
on the guest list,” Grandmère said, from where she sat, enjoying a post-rehearsal cigarette (apparently, she’s allowing herself to smoke after run-throughs, as well as after meals), “for Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday?” Tina asked, a funny inflection in her voice.

  “That is correct,” Grandmère said, exhaling a plume of blue smoke. Señor Eduardo coughed a little in his sleep as some of it drifted his way.

  “But isn’t this Wednesday the night of the Aide de Ferme benefit?” someone else—I think it was Boris—asked.

  “That is correct,” Grandmère said, again.

  And that’s when it finally sunk in.

  Lilly was the first one up.

  “WHAT?” she cried. “You’re going to make us do this play in front of all the people coming to your PARTY?”

  “It’s a musical,” Grandmère replied darkly. “Not a play.”

  “You said, when I asked you last week, that we’d be putting Braid! on a week from that day!” Lilly shouted. “And that was Thursday!”

  Grandmère puffed on her cigarette. “Oh, dear,” she said, not sounding in the least concerned. “I was off by one day, wasn’t I?”

  “I am not,” Boris said, drawing himself up to his full height, “going to be strangled by some girl’s hair in front of Joshua Bell.”

  “And I am not,” Lilly declared, “going to play someone’s mistress in front of Benazir Bhutto—no matter how long she supported the Taliban!”

  “I don’t want to play a maid in front of celebrities,” Tina said meekly.

  Grandmère very calmly stubbed her cigarette out on an empty plate someone had left on top of the piano. I saw Phil eyeing the smoking butt nervously from where he sat at the keyboard. Obviously, he is as nervous about contracting lung cancer from secondhand smoke as I am.

  “So this,” Grandmère said, her Gitane-roughened voice projecting very loudly across the empty ballroom, “is the thanks I get, for taking your dull, average little lives, and injecting them with glamour and art.”

  “Um,” Boris said. “My life already has art in it. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Your Royal Highness, but I’m a concert violinist, and I—”

  “I tried,” Grandmère’s voice rang out, as she ignored him, “to do something to enrich your humdrum days of scholastic slavery. I tried to give you something meaningful, something you could look forward to. And this is how you repay me. By whining that you don’t want to share what we’ve worked so hard to create together with others. What kind of ACTORS are you????”

  Everyone blinked at her. Because, of course, none of us considered himself an actor of any kind.

  “Were you not,” Grandmère demanded, “put on this earth with a God-given obligation to share your talent with others? Would you dare to presume to DEFY God’s plan for you by DENYING the world the right to see you perform your art? Is THAT what you’re trying to tell me? That you want to DEFY God?”

  Only Lilly was brave enough to answer.

  “Um,” she said. “Your Highness, I don’t believe I am defying God—if She does, in fact, exist—by saying that I don’t care to make an ass out of myself in front of a bunch of world leaders and movie stars.”

  “Too late!” Grandmère cried. “You’ve already done it! Because only an ASS gets embarrASSed. Where do you think the word comes from, anyway? A true artist is never embarrassed by her work. NEVER.”

  “Fine,” Lilly said. “I’m not embarrassed. But—”

  “This show,” Grandmère went on, “into which all of you have poured your lifeblood, is too important not to be shared with as many people as we possibly can. And what venue could possibly be as fitting for its one and only performance than a benefit that is being held to raise money for the poor olive growers of Genovia? Don’t you see, people? Braid! bears a message—a message of hope—that it is vital people—especially Genovia’s farmers—hear. In these dark times, our show illustrates that evildoers will ultimately never win, and that even the weakest among us can play a role in thwarting them. Were we to deny people this message, would we not, in essence, be letting the evildoers win?”

  “Oh, brother,” I heard Lilly mutter, under her breath.

  But everybody else looked pretty inspired.

  Until it sunk in that Wednesday night is the day after tomorrow.

  And some of us—okay, Kenny—still don’t even know the choreography.

  Which is why Grandmère said to be prepared for tomorrow night’s rehearsal to go all night long, if necessary.

  Still, Grandmère’s speech WAS pretty inspiring. We really CAN’T let the evildoers win.

  Even if the evildoers happen to be…well, ourselves.

  Which is why I’ve just told Hans to take me to Engle Hall, the dorm where Michael lives at Columbia. I am going to get him to forgive me if I have to grovel on the floor like Rommel when he realizes it’s bath time.

  Monday, March 8, the limo home from Michael’s dorm

  Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

  That is all I can think of to say.

  Also: I’m such an idiot.

  Seriously. I mean, all the clues were there, and I just didn’t put them together.

  Okay, maybe if I write it all down in a lucid manner, I’ll be able to process it.

  So I walked into Engle Hall, where Michael lives, and buzzed his room from the lobby. He was actually home for a change—thank God. He seemed kind of surprised when he heard my voice on the intercom, but he said he’d be right down, because campus security officers guard the doors to the hall, and won’t let anybody past the lobby and into the building unless they’re escorted by a resident. Not even princesses and their bodyguards. The resident has to come down and sign them in, and the guests have to leave ID, and stuff.

  I took the fact that Michael was willing even to come down and sign me in as a good sign.

  Until I saw him.

  Then I realized there was nothing good about it at all.

  Because Michael looked REALLY sad about something. I mean, REALLY sad.

  And I started getting a very bad feeling.

  Because, you know, I know he has midterms this week, and all. Which would be enough to depress anyone.

  But Michael didn’t look midterm-depressed.

  He looked more I-just-found-out-my-girlfriend-is-a-stark-raving-lunatic-and-I-have-to-break-up-with-her-now depressed.

  But I thought maybe I was just, you know. Projecting, or whatever.

  Still, the whole way up to his room, in the elevator, I was rehearsing in my mind what to say. You know, how I should act when he brought up the Sexy Dance. And the beer. I was thinking it shouldn’t be too hard for me to convince him that I had been suffering from a temporary hormonal imbalance at the time, on account of how I should be used to acting by now, since I’ve been doing it all week.

  Plus, you know, I’m the world’s biggest liar.

  But the J.P. thing. That was going to be harder to explain. Because I wasn’t sure I even understood it myself.

  Then, when we got to Michael’s floor, Lars discreetly took a seat in the TV lounge, where there was a game on, and Michael and I went to his room, which was fortunately empty, his roommate, Doo Pak, being at a meeting of the Korean Student Association.

  “So,” I said, trying to sound all casual after sitting down on Michael’s neatly made bed. Even though the last thing I felt was casual. In fact, I felt as if all the blood in my veins had frozen up. If someone had chopped my arm off at that moment, I’m pretty sure it would have shattered into a thousand pieces instead of bleeding, like I was one of those frozen guys in that cryogenic prison in Demolition Man (also a dystopic sci-fi film).

  Because suddenly, I was sure Michael was going to break up with me for being such an immature freak at his party.

  And the next thing I knew, I heard myself blurting, “Look, I’m sorry about the stupid sexy dance. Really, really sorry. And there’s nothing going on between me and J.P. Seriously. It�
�s just that I was FREAKING OUT. I mean, all those supersmart college girls—”

  Michael, who’d taken a seat across from me in his desk chair, blinked. “Sexy dance?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The one I was doing with J.P.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows. “Was that what you were doing? A sexy dance?”

  “Yes.” I could feel my cheeks heating up. Can I just say that when Buffy did a sexy dance at the Bronze to make Angel jealous in that one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m pretty sure Angel went out and killed a bunch of vampires afterward just to work out his sexual frustration? Trust MY boyfriend to not even recognize a sexy dance when he saw one.

  I tried not to think about what this suggested for the future of our relationship. Not to mention my sexy-dancing skills.

  “It’s not totally my fault,” I insisted. “Well, I mean, the sexy-dance part was. But you invite me to this party knowing I’ll be the youngest, least intelligent person there. How did you EXPECT me to feel? I was totally intimidated!”

  “Mia,” Michael said, a little dryly. “You were by far not the least intelligent person there. And you’re a princess. And you were intimidated?”

  “Well,” I said. “I may be a princess, but I still get intimidated. Especially by older girls. College girls. Who know about…college things. And I’m sorry I spazzed. But was what I did really so unforgivable? I mean, all I did was have ONE beer and do a sexy dance with another guy. And I wasn’t even technically dancing with him, just sort of in front of him. And okay, maybe ultimately it wasn’t that sexy. And I do realize now that the beret was a mistake. The whole thing was totally immature, I know. But—” I could feel tears welling in my eyes. “But you still could have called instead of giving me the silent treatment for two days!”

  “The silent treatment?” Michael echoed. “What are you talking about? I haven’t been giving you the silent treatment, Mia.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, fighting to keep from bursting into tears. “I left you, like, fifty messages, plus sent you bagels AND a giant cookie, and all I heard from you is this cryptic text, WE NEED 2 TALK—”

  “Give me a break, Mia,” Michael said. Now he looked kind of annoyed. “I’ve been slightly preoccupied—”