Princess Mia

by Meg Cabot

Which is easy for him to say. He’s not the one who’s committed to speaking in front of the Opus Dei of women’s organizations a week from tomorrow.

  Anyway, when I got back to the loft, I found that Mom had used my absence as an opportunity to clean my room and send all of my bedding out to the laundry-by-the-pound place. She had also opened all the windows and turned on all the fans and was airing out my room so energetically, Fat Louie wouldn’t come out from under the bed for fear of being swept up in the windstorm.

  Meanwhile, Mr. G had taken away my TV. Which Dad informed me they aren’t replacing, because Dr. Knutz doesn’t believe children should have their own TVs.

  So now I know what Dr. Knutz and I will be discussing for a good portion of our appointed hour together tomorrow.

  Whatever. I guess I have bigger things to worry about. Like that while I was showering just now, Mom snuck into the bathroom and stole my Hello Kitty pajamas. And threw them down the incinerator.

  “Trust me, Mia,” she said, when I confronted her about it. “It’s better this way.”

  I guess she’s right. Maybe I was getting a little too attached to them.

  Still. I’ll miss them. We went through a lot together, my Hello Kitty pajamas and I.

  Mom, Dad, and Mr. G are all sitting around the kitchen table right now, having some kind of not-so-secret conference about me. Not-so-secret because I can totally hear. I mean, I might be depressed, but I’m not DEAF.

  To distract myself, I went online for the first time in, like, a million years to see if anyone had e-mailed me.

  It turned out they had. A lot. I had 243 unread messages.

  And, okay, most of them were spam. But quite a few were cheerful attempts to make me feel better from Tina. There were some from Ling Su and Shameeka, too, and even a couple from Boris. (He is such a good boyfriend. He always does exactly what Tina tells him to.) There were quite a few from J.P., mostly funny forwards I guess he thought might cheer me up or something. Not that he knows I’m down. He BETTER not know, anyway.

  Then, as I was going through, sending message after message into my trash folder, I saw it.

  An e-mail from Michael.

  I swear, my heart started beating about a million miles a minute, and my palms got instantly soaked. I so didn’t want to click on that message. Because what if it was just a reiteration of what Michael had said to me on Sunday? The thing about how we should just be friends and see other people? I don’t want to see that again. I don’t want to hear that again. I don’t even want to think about that again. I’d been doing everything I could all week NOT to have to revisit that particular conversation in my mind…and now there was a chance of it flashing in front of my eyes?

  No way.

  But then, just as I was about to hit DELETE, I hesitated. Because what if it wasn’t about that? What if—and, okay, I realized this was a big What if even as I was thinking it, but whatever—what if it was an e-mail telling me he’d changed his mind, and didn’t want to break up after all?

  What if he’d been as depressed as me this past week?

  What if, after a week apart, he’d realized how much he misses me, and as much as I was sitting here longing to be in his arms, smelling his neck, Michael was longing to have me in his arms, smelling his neck?

  And before I could change my mind, I clicked OPEN….

  SKINNERBX: Hey, Mia. It’s me. Well, obviously. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. Lilly tells me you haven’t been in school all week…hope everything is all right. I’m settling in here in Tsukuba. This place is a little nutty—they really do eat noodles for breakfast! But fortunately you can still find egg sandwiches most places. The work is what I expected it to be—hard—but I really think I have a solid chance of actually getting this thing off the ground. Although who knows if I’ll still feel that optimistic after a few more weeks of this.

  Did you see they’re supposedly in talks for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel reunion movie? I thought you’d be excited about that.

  Well, I have to go…I really hope you’re out of school because you’ve jetted off to somewhere great for princess duty, and not because you’ve come down with something.

  Michael

  I sat there for a long time with my finger poised to click REPLY. I mean, he’d expressed concern over my health (physical, not mental, but that’s okay. I doubt even Michael would have been able to predict I’d hit rock bottom, self-actualization-wise, and end up in a cowboy psychologist’s office in my Hello Kitty pajamas and a duvet).

  Still, that had to mean something, right? That there’s something there? That maybe he still loves me, at least a little? That maybe there’s a chance after all that someday, some way, I might be able to smell his neck again, on a semi-regular basis?

  But then…I don’t know. I thought about what he’d said on the phone. About just wanting to be friends. That’s all, I realized, this e-mail was. A friendly note to show he had no hard feelings over the J.P. thing.

  HOW COULD HE HAVE NO HARD FEELINGS OVER THAT? HADN’T HE CARED ABOUT ME AT ALL?????

  Or had I, in the complete psychotic break I had last week over the Judith Gershner thing, managed to destroy any iota of romantic feeling he ever had for me?

  Which is when I moved my mouse from the REPLY button to DELETE. And pressed.

  And just like that, his e-mail was gone.

  And no way was I writing him back.

  Michael may be over me. But I’m not over him. Not yet, anyway.

  And I can’t pretend like I am. And I’m not going to do something stupid and undignified like hit REPLY and ask him to take me back.

  But the only way I know how not to do that is just not to say anything to him at all.

  After I deleted Michael’s e-mail, I checked ihatemiathermopolis.com. There were no new updates, thank God.

  Well, why would there be? I haven’t been out of the house all week. Whoever is running the site doesn’t have any new material.

  Now Mom’s calling me. She and Dad and Mr. G have ordered pizza from Tre Giovanni. We’re all going to sit down to dinner like a normal family. Just me, my mom, her husband, their kid, and my dad, the prince of Genovia.

  Oh, yeah. We’re a normal family, all right.

  No wonder I’m in therapy.

  Friday, September 17, French

  Oh my God. It is so…surreal, being here.

  I think Dr. K was wrong, and I do need drugs. Because I just don’t see how else I’m going to cope. I know he said it’s good to do one thing every day that scares you—thanks for that, by the way, Eleanor Roosevelt, thanks a lot—but this is like NINE MILLION THINGS all at once.

  And, yeah, okay, I don’t know why SCHOOL should be so scary. I was never scared of school before. At least, not this much.

  But there’s so much more to it than just school. There’s having to TALK to people. There’s having to act NORMAL. When I know I’m NOT normal.

  And, okay, the truth is, I’ve never been normal. But I am more NOT normal than ever. I have lost my support system—the ONE thing I have been able to count on for the past two years to keep me sane in this sea of complete insanity—Michael.

  And now, just like that, he’s gone—completely ripped from my life—and I’m just supposed to go on like nothing’s happened? Yeah. Right.

  And I have to be here, in this—let’s face it—nuthouse, with all these people who are WAY CRAZIER THAN I AM (they just won’t admit there’s anything wrong with them—unlike me) with absolutely no one to look forward to going home to and saying, “Oh my God, you would not believe what so-and-so did today.”

  Seriously, that is just cruel.

  But I guess it’s what I deserve. I mean, it isn’t as if I didn’t bring all this upon myself with my own stupidity.

  At least I haven’t been forced to suffer the onslaught of a full day of this place. I got to spend my morning waiting around Dr. Fung’s office to get my blood drawn. And since I’d had to fast since midnight the night before, i
n order for my blood work not to get messed up, I was practically STARVING. I mean, it was bad enough I had to get out of bed, shower, and get dressed.

  But I didn’t even get breakfast!

  Worse, even though my belly was totally empty, I couldn’t…well, for some reason my uniform skirt wouldn’t close. I mean, it would zip—mostly—but I couldn’t get the button to go through the slot, because there was all this SKIN in the way. I finally had to use a safety pin to keep my skirt on.

  At first I thought my skirt must have shrunk at the cleaners and I was kind of mad about it.

  But my bra didn’t fit either! I mean, I realize it’s been a while since I put on any underwear, since I was in my Hello Kitty pajamas for most of the week.

  And I will admit I noticed things have been getting a little snug all over lately. And I’ve only worn my jeans with stretch in them. And had to use the last hooks on all my bras.

  And even then they leave marks on me.

  But when I put on my favorite bra this morning, for the first time in my life, I had CLEAVAGE, because it was squeezing my boobs so tight.

  That’s right. I actually have boobs to be squeezed. I don’t know where they came from, but I looked down, and there they were. Hello! Boobs!

  So then I thought maybe the laundry-by-the-pound place had shrunk my bra too. So I tried a different one. Same thing. Then another. SAME THING. I couldn’t understand it.

  But when I got to the SoHo Medical Clinic and they FINALLY called my name, and I went in, and they weighed me, I found out what was going on. I was SHOCKED to find that I weighed almost SIX Fat Louies!

  That is nearly one more Fat Louie than I weighed last time I stepped on a scale! Which I’ll admit was a while ago, but still!

  And, okay, maybe I’ve been hitting the meat kind of hard this past week or so. Well, not just the meat, but the pizza, the Girl Scout cookies, the peanut butter, the cold sesame noodles, the Honey Nut Cheerios, the microwave popcorn (with melted butter), the Oreos, the Häagen-Dazs, and the fried samosas from Baluchi’s….

  But to have gained almost a whole CAT?

  Wow. That is all I have to say. Just…wow.

  Of course, there was a rational explanation beyond the meat. Dr. Fung went, “You’re still well within the body-mass-index range for your height, Princess. It’s actually quite normal to have these sort of growth spurts at your age. Some women have them even into their twenties.”

  Because I haven’t just grown out. I’ve grown up—I’m five feet ten inches now. I grew a whole other INCH since the last time I was at the doctor’s office!

  If I keep going like this, I’ll be six feet tall by the time I’m eighteen.

  On the bright side of gaining a whole Fat Louie? I guess I’m not flat-chested anymore.

  On the not-so-bright side? I’m going to have to talk to Mom about getting new bras. And panties. And jeans. And pajamas. And sweats. And a new school uniform.

  And new ball gowns.

  Oh, God.

  But whatever. Like I don’t have way bigger things to worry about (ha) than the size of my chest (gargantuan) and the fact that my skirt is being held together by pieces of metal and all of my jeans are too short. I mean, there’s the fact that in half an hour I’m going to have to go down to the cafeteria.

  And see Lilly.

  Who will no doubt take her tray and go sit elsewhere when she sees me.

  Which…well, whatever. I know Tina will still want to sit with me. That is the only thing, in fact, that is keeping me from turning to Lars and going, “We’re leaving,” and marching straight out of this loony bin.

  In fact it’s a good thing Dr. Knutz mentioned Tina yesterday, because every time I start to feel too much like I am slipping back down this hole I’m trying to crawl out of, I think of her, and it’s like she’s a root or something I can grab hold of to keep from sliding farther into the black abyss of despair.

  I wonder how Tina would feel if she found out I think of her as a root?

  Of course, I have way worse things to worry about than who I’m going to sit with at lunch: the fact that I’m in therapy and I don’t want anyone to know; the fact that in a week I’m allegedly going to have to address a couple thousand of New York City’s most influential businesswomen; the fact that the love of my life just wants to be friends (and see other people) and that I no longer have him to be my loving support system and so have been cast adrift to swim the social seas of adolescence alone; the fact that the meat industry pumps so many hormones into their products that just by consuming a few dozen ham sandwiches and servings of kung pao chicken over the past week, I have finally managed to grow breasts virtually overnight; ihatemiathermopolis.com; the fact that both the polar ice caps are melting due to anthropogenic global warming and the polar bears are all drowning.

  But I’m trying to take all of my worries one at a time. Baby steps, like Rocky took when he was first starting to walk. Baby steps. First I need to get through lunch. Then I’ll worry about the polar ice caps.

  Four more hours until I can get out of here.

  Friday, September 17, Gifted and Talented

  Great. So now I have another worry to add to the list:

  Apparently, the entire school thinks J.P. and I are going out.

  This is what happens when you are gone for almost a week after having a nervous breakdown and aren’t around to defend yourself.

  Well, I guess it’s also what happens when you have your picture splattered all over the place coming out of a theater arm-in-arm with a guy. But he was only helping me down the steps! Because I was in heels! And the steps were carpeted and there were no handrails!

  Geez!

  And, okay, based on the photographic evidence, I could see why middle America—and the rest of the world, I guess—would think J.P. and I are going out.

  Still! You’d think my own FRIENDS would know better than that!

  But apparently not. And the line in the sand has already been drawn:

  Lilly now sits at Kenny Showalter’s lunch table.

  I guess their mutual appreciation for his muay thai fighting friends has drawn them together, or something.

  Perin and Ling Su sit with them, although Ling Su told me, over at the taco bar, that she’d rather sit with me.

  “But Lilly appointed me secretary,” she explained, sounding genuinely dismayed about it. “Which is better than treasurer, I guess”—this is definitely true, given what happened when Ling Su was treasurer last year—“which is what Lilly appointed Kenny. But it means I have to sit with her and Perin, who’s vice president, so we can talk about Lilly’s new initiatives, like this whole renting-the-roof-for-cell-phone-towers-in-exchange-for-free-laptops-for-scholarship-students thing, and how we’re going to guarantee more AEHS students get into the Ivy League school of their choice, and that kind of thing.”

  “It’s okay, Ling Su,” I said to her, as I sprinkled cheddar cheese over my spicy beef tostada. “Really. I understand.”

  “Good. And just for the record,” she added, “I think you and J.P. make an awesome couple. He’s so hot.”

  “We’re not going out,” I said, totally confused.

  “Right,” Ling Su said knowingly, and winked at me. Like she thought I was just saying that, in some kind of misguided attempt to stay on Lilly’s good side! Which would have been so totally futile, if that’s why I’d said it. But that isn’t why I said it at all! I said it because it was true!

  But Ling Su’s not the only one who thinks J.P. and I are an item. When I went to return my lunch tray, one of the cafeteria workers smiled at me and said, “Maybe you can get him to give our corn a try.”

  At first I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. Then, when I did, I totally started blushing. J.P.’s notorious hatred for corn! And she thought I could cure him of it? Oh, God!

  At least J.P. doesn’t appear to realize what’s going on. Or, if he does know, he isn’t letting on. He seemed surprised to see me show up at lunch for
the first time all week, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it (thank God), the way Tina did, by squealing and hugging me and telling me how much she’d missed me.

  Which was very nice, but sort of embarrassing, since it drew even more attention to the fact that I’ve been gone so long, and I’m totally tired of going, “Bronchitis,” when people ask me where I was all week. Because I can’t exactly go, “In my Hello Kitty pajamas in bed, refusing to get up after my boyfriend dumped me.”

  The only thing J.P. did that was at all out of the ordinary was smile at me when there was nothing to smile about—Boris was actually going on about his hatred for emo, specifically My Chemical Romance, as he is wont to do. I was taking a big bite of my tostada (it’s amazing how, even though I’m totally depressed, I’m still eating like a horse. But whatever, I was starving; all I’d had to eat all day was a PowerBar I picked up at Ho’s Deli after my doctor’s appointment, on my way into school) and noticed J.P.’s smile—which, like Ling Su said, really is pretty hot—and went, “What?” with my mouth all full of chopped beef, cheddar cheese, salsa, sour cream, jalapeños, and shredded lettuce.

  “Nothing,” J.P. said, still smiling. “I’m just glad you’re back. Don’t stay away so long again, okay?”

  Which was nice of him. Especially considering the fact that he MUST know people are saying we’re an item.

  Which would at least partially explain why Lilly is sticking so assiduously to her side of the G and T room. She won’t look at me—won’t speak to me—won’t let on that I even exist. To her, I’m apparently Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter.

  Only the book, not the movie version in which Hester Prynne was played by Demi Moore and was semi-cool and blew stuff up. Oh, wait…that was G.I. Jane.

  I wish I could just go up to Lilly and be like, “Look. I’m SORRY. I’m sorry I was such an ass to your brother, and I’m sorry if I did anything to hurt you. But don’t you think I’ve been punished enough? I can barely BREATHE now because there’s NO POINT in breathing if I know that at the end of the day, I can’t smell your brother’s neck. All I can think about is how I will never, ever again hear the sound of his sarcastic laughter as we watch South Park together. Can you not see that it took every ounce of courage and strength I possess just to come here today? That I’m in THERAPY? That I spend every single second of the day wishing I were DEAD? So do you think you could drop the cold shoulder thing and cut me some slack? Because I really do value and miss your friendship. And by the way, do you really think hooking up with random muay thai fighters is the most mature way to respond to your heartache? Are you supposed to be Lana Weinberger, or something?”