Princess in Waiting (8 page)

call? What if he noticed my nostrils flaring as I spoke? I don't know if he'sfigured out that they

do that when I lie, but I think I'd sort of mentioned it to Lilly, since

I have a complete inability to keep my mouth shut about stuff I really should just keep to myself, and

supposing she told him?

Then, as I sat there dejectedly on my bed, pretty sleepy because in Genovia it was five in the morning, I

had a brilliant idea.

I could see if Michael was logged on, and instant message him! I could do it even though my mom was

on the phone with Grandmere, because we have DSL now!

So I scrambled over to my computer and did just that. And he was online!

Michael, I wrote. Hi, it's me! I'm home! I wanted to call you, but it's after eleven,

and I didn't want your mom and dad to get mad.

Michael has changed his screen name since the demise of
Crackhead.
Now he's no longer CracKing.

He's LinuxRulz.

LinuxRulz: Welcome home! It's good to hear from you. I was worried you were dead or something.

So he had noticed I'd stopped calling! Which meant the plan that Tina and I had come up with was

working perfectly.

At least, so far.

FtLouie: No, not dead. Just super-busy. You know, fate of the aristocracy resting on

my shoulders and all of that. So should Lars and I pick you and Lilly up for school tomorrow?

LinuxRulz: That'd be good. What are you doing Friday?

What am I doing Friday? Was he asking me out? Were Michael and I actually going to have a date? At

last????

I tried to type casually so he wouldn't know that I was so excited. I had already freaked Fat Louie out by

jumping up and down in my computer chair and almost rolling over his tail.

FtLouie: Nothing, so far as I know. Why?

LinuxRulz: Want to go to dinner at the Screening Room? They're showing the first Star Wars. You know

the real first one, not that waste of digital pixels, The Phantom Headcase.

OH MY GOD HE WAS ASKING ME OUT. Dinner and a movie. At the same time, because at the

Screening Room you

sit at a table and eat dinner while the movie is going. And
Star Wars
is only my favourite movie of all time,

after
Dirty Dancing.
Gould there BE a girl luckier than me? No, I don't think so.

My fingers were trembling as I wrote:

FtLouie: I think that would be OK. I'll have to check with my mom.

Can I let you know tomorrow?

LinuxRulz: OK. So see you tomorrow? Around 7:45?

FtLouie: Tomorrow, 7:45.

I wanted to add something like I miss you or I love you, but I don't know, it just felt too weird, and I

couldn't do it. I mean,

it's embarrassing, telling the person you love that you love them. It shouldn't be, but it is. Also, it didn't

seem like something

Jane Eyre would do. Unless, you know, she had just discovered the man she loved had gone blind in a

heroic attempt to

rescue his crazy firebug wife from an inferno she'd set herself.

Asking me out to dinner and a movie didn't really seem the same, somehow.

Then Michael wrote:

LinuxRulz: Kid, I've been from one side of this galaxy to the other...

which is one of my favourite lines from the first
Star Wars.
So then I wrote:

FtLouie: I happen to like nice men...

jumping ahead to
The Empire Strikes Back,
to which Michael replied:

LinuxRulz: I'm nice.

Which is better than saying I love you, because right after Han Solo says that, he totally kisses her.OH

MY GOD!!!

It really is like Michael is Han Solo and I'm Princess Leia, because Michael is good at fixing stuff like

hyper drives, and,

well, I'm a princess, and I'm very environmentally conscious like Leia, and everything.

Plus Michael's dog Pavlov sort of looks like Chewbacca, if Chewbacca were a sheltie.

I could not imagine a more perfect date if I tried. Mom will let me go, too, because the Screening Room

isn't that far away,

and it's
Michael,
after all. Even Mr. Gianini likes Michael, and he doesn't like many of the boys who go to

Albeit Einstein,

as he says they are mostly all walking bundles of testosterone.

I will never get to sleep now, I am too worked up.I
am going to see him in eight hours and fifteen

minutes.

And on Friday I am going to be sitting next to him in a darkened room. All alone. With no one else

around. Except all the waitresses and the other people at the movie. The Force is
so
with me.

Tuesday; January 19,

First Day of School after Winter Break, Homeroom

I barely made it out of bed this morning. In fact, the only reason I was able to drag myself out from

beneath the covers and Fat Louie, who lay on my chest purring like a lawnmower all night long - was the prospect of seeing

Michael for the

first time in thirty-two days.

It is completely cruel to force a person of my tender years, when I should be getting at least nine hours of

sleep a night, to

travel back and forth between two such drastically different time zones, with not even a single day of rest

in-between. I am completely jet lagged, and I am sure it is going to stunt not only my physical growth (not

in the height department because

I am tall enough, thank you, but in the mammary gland division, glands being very sensitive to things like

disrupted sleep

cycles), but my intellectual growth as well.

And now that I am entering the second semester of my freshman year, my grades are actually going to

start to matter. Not

that I intend to go to college or anything, at least not right away. I, like Prince William, want to take a

year off between high school and college, hopefully volunteering for Greenpeace in one of those boats

that goes out between Japanese and Russian whaling ships and the whales. I don't think Greenpeace

takes volunteers who don't have at least a 3.0 average.

Anyway, it was murder getting up this morning, especially when, after I'd dragged on my school uniform,

I realized my

Queen Amidala panties weren't in my underwear drawer. I have to wear my Queen Amidala underwear

on the first day

of every semester, or I'll have bad luck forthe rest of the year. I
always
have good luck when I wear my

Queen Amidala panties. For instance, I was wearing them the night of the Non-Denominational Winter

Dance, when Michael finally told

me he loved me.

I have to wear them on the first day of second semester, just like I'll have to send them to the

laundry-by-the-pound place

and get them washed before Friday so I can wear them on my date with Michael. Because I'm going to

need extra good

luck that night, since I plan on giving Michael his birthday present then. His birthday present that I'm

hoping he'll like so

much, he'll fall in love with me, if he isn't already. I am still not too clear on that whole point.

So I had to go into my mom's room, the one she shares with Mr Gianini, and wake her up and be all,

'Mom, where's my

Queen Amidala underwear?' Thank God Mr. G was in the shower. I swear to God if I'd had to see them

in bed together

in the condition I was in at that time, I'd have gone completely Anne Heche.

My mom, who sleeps like a log even when she isn't pregnant, just went, 'Shurnowog,' which isn't even a

word.

'Mom,' I said. 'I need my Queen Amidala panties. Where are they?'

But all my mom said was, 'Kapukin.'

So then I got an idea. Not that I really thought there was any way my mom wasn't going to let me go out

with Michael,

after her uplifting speech about him the night before. But just to make sure she couldn't back out of it, I

went, 'Mom,

can I go with Michael for dinner and a movie at the Screening Room this Friday night?'

And she went, rolling over, 'Yeah, yeah, scuniper.'

So I got that taken care of.

But I still had to go to school in my regular underwear, which creeped me out a little because there's

nothing special

about it, it is just boring and white.

But then I kind of perked up when I got in the limo, because of the prospect of seeing Michael and all.

But then I was like, Oh, my God, what was going to happen when I saw Michael? Because when you

haven't seen your boyfriend in thirty-two days, you can't just be all, 'Oh, hi,' when you see him. You have

to, like, give him a hug or
something.

But how was I going to give him a hug in the car? With Lars watching? I mean, at least I wasn't going to

have to worry

about my stepdad watching, since Mr. G fully refuses to take the limo to school with me and Lars and

Lilly and Michael

every morning, even though we are all going to the same place. But Mr. Gianini says he likes the subway.

He says it is the

only time he gets to listen to music he likes (Mom and I won't let him play Blood, Sweat and Tears in the

loft, so he has to

listen to it on his Diskman).

But what about Lilly? I mean, Lilly was totally going to be there. How can I hug Michael in front of Lilly?

And OK, it is

partly because of Lilly that Michael and I ever got together in the first place. But that does not mean that I

feel perfectly comfortable participating in, you know, public displays of affection with him
right in front

of her.

If this were Genovia it would be all right to kiss him on either cheek, because that is the standard form of

greeting there.

But this is America, where you barely even shake hands with people, unless you're like the mayor.

Plus there was the whole Jane Eyre thing. I mean, Tina and I had resolved we were not going to chase

our boyfriends,

but we hadn't said anything about how to greet them again after not having seen them for thirty-two days.

I was almost going to ask Lars what he thought I ought todo when I had a brainstorm right as we were

pulling up to

the Moscovitzes' building. Hans, the driver, was going to hop out and open the door for Lilly and

Michael, but I went,

'I've got it,' and thenI hopped out, instead.

And there was Michael, standing in the slush, looking all tall and handsome and manly, the wind tugging

at his dark hair.

Just the sight of him set my heart going about a thousand beats per minute. I felt like I was going to melt. .

.

. . . especially when he smiled once he saw me, a smile that went all the way up to his eyes, which were

as deeply brown

as I remembered, and filled with the same intelligence and good humour that had been there the last time

I had gazed into

them, thirty-two days ago.

What I could not tell was whether or not they were filled with love. Tina had said I'd be able to tell, just

by looking into

his eyes, whether or not Michael loved me. But the truth is, all I could tell by looking into his eyes was

that Michael doesn't

find me utterly repulsive. If he had, he'd have looked away, the way I do when I see that boy in the

cafeteria at school who

always picks the corn out of his chilli. 'Hi,' I said, my voice suddenly super-squeaky. 'Hi,' Michael said,

his voice not

squeaky at all, but really very thrillingly deep and Wolverine-like.

So then we stood there with our gazes locked on one another, and our breath coming out in little puffs of

white steam,

and people hurrying down Fifth Avenue on the sidewalk around us, people I barely saw. I hardly even

noticed Lilly go,

'Oh, for Pete's sake,' and stomp past me to climb into the limo.

Then Michael went, 'It's really good to see you.' And I went, 'It's really good to see you, too.' From

inside the limo

Lilly went, 'It's really cold out, will you two hurry up and get in here already?'

So then I went, 'I guess we'd better . . .'

And Michael went, 'Yeah,' and put his hand on the limo door to hold it open for me. But as I started to

duck in there,

he put his other hand on my arm, and when I turned around to see what he wanted (even though I kinda

already knew)

he went, 'So can you go, on Friday night?'

And I went, 'Uh-huh.'

And then he kind of pulled on my arm in a very Mr. Rochester-like manner, causing me to take a step

towards him,

and faster than I'd ever seen him move before, he bent down and kissed me, right on the mouth, in front

of his doorman

and all the rest of Fifth Avenue!

I have to admit, Michael's doorman and all of the people passing by, including everyone on the Ml bus

that went barrelling down the street at that very moment, didn't seem to take very much notice of the fact

that the Princess of Genovia was

getting kissed right there in front of them.

ButI noticed,Inoticed, and it felt great. It made me feel like maybe all my worrying about whether

Michael loved me as

a potential life partner as opposed to just as a friend had maybe been stupid.

Because you don't kiss a friend like that.

So then I slid into the back of the limo with Lilly, a big silly smile on my face that I was totally afraid she

might make fun of,

but I couldn't help it, I was so happy. Because in spite of not having on my Queen Amidala underwear, I

was already having

a good semester, and it wasn't even fifteen minutes old!