Meg Cabot - Princess Mia

“Oh my God,” Lana said, when she saw what I was having for lunch. “Are you eating the corn dog? Do you have any idea how many carbs are in that? No wonder you’ve gone up a size. Hey, are those the new earrings you got Saturday? They look cute.”

Oh, yes. I was outed:

Outed as being a Friend of Lana.

Well, whatever. I mean, she’s not THAT bad. Sure, we’ve had our differences in the past.

But she does have some really great tips on how to stop biting your nails (put Sally Hansen Hard As Nails on them every night without fail before bed, and afterward, an olive oil cuticle rub).

Tina was staring at Lana with her mouth hanging open in astonishment, causing Trisha to say, “Take a picture, sweetie, it’ll last longer,” then remark that she liked the way Tina does her eyeliner, and asked if wearing it that way was part of her religion, or what.

This caused Tina to choke on her tuna salad.

“So do any of you have Schuyler for Precalc?” Lana wanted to know. “Because I don’t have a freaking clue what’s going on in that class.”

To which Boris replied, looking pained, “Um…I do.”

And then he spent the rest of the lunch period helping Lana with her homework, while Tina spent the rest of the lunch period showing Trisha how she does her eyes, and J.P. spent the rest of the lunch period smirking into his chili (sans corn).

All I wanted to do was read my translation of Amelie’s journal. But I couldn’t, because I was worried about how that might look. You know, that it might appear antisocial.

And I have enough strikes against me at the moment without “antisocial” being added to the list.

I did notice Lilly giving me a very dirty look over her shoulder as she went to take her tray up to the counter.

But that might have been because I was letting Lana put mini barrettes in my hair and Lilly has a thing about personal grooming in the caf.

Monday, September 20, Chemistry

J.P. wants to know how, merely by going shopping with Lana, I became one of the In Crowd.

I told him Lana and I didn’t merely go shopping: We wentbra shopping.

To which J.P. replied, “Please tell me all about it. And I meanall .”

But I was too busy reading about Princess Amelie. Uncle Francesco busted into the palace library and ordered all the books there burned, just to be mean, I’m sure, because he happened to know Amelie really liked them, not because he seriously believed they were contributing to the spread of the disease.

As if that weren’t upsetting enough, he also threw the drafts of the executive order she’d so carefully penned and signed—and hadwitnessed , which was no joke, since it was hard to find two living people in the palace to witness the signing of a document—into the fire. Even though Amelie explained to him that whatever it was she’d drawn up had been for the good of the Genovian people! Whom she did not believe he cared about. Especially since they were dropping like flies, and yet he was still allowing foreign ships to dock in the port, which only seemed to be bringing more disease into the country…not to mention spreading it back to the towns the ships had come from, on their return trips.

Amelie accused her uncle of only caring about whether or not the olive oil got delivered. To Uncle Francesco, it wasalways about the olive oil. And the crown, of course.

But no! He thought burning books (and executive orders) was the answer to all their problems!

I really wanted to keep reading because things were finally getting good with poor Amelie (or bad, as the case might be).

But Kenny yelled at me that if I wasn’t going to help with the experiment, I could just accept the zero I deserved.

So I’m stirring. Which would explain why my handwriting looks so bad.

Monday, September 20, the loft

Even though I am still in the depths of despair and all, I was actually kind of excited after school today because

No princess lessons

Even though I have no TV, I have something totally excellent to read.

I fully intended to take off my school uniform, put on my sweats, curl up in bed, and read about my ancestress.

But my (admittedly mild) excitement was short-lived, due to walking into the loft and finding Mr. G at the dining room table with all of the assignments that I missed last week.

“Sit,” he said, holding out a chair.

So I sat.

And now we’re tackling all my make-up work. One class at a time.

This is so unfair.

Monday, September 20, 11 p.m., the loft

Oh my God, I am so tired. And we’re not even halfway caught up with everything.

What is the POINT of piling so much work on us? Don’t they know that all they are doing is breaking our already fragile spirits? Is this really what the powers-that-be want? A generation of wounded, broken souls?

No wonder so many teens turn to drugs. I would, too, if I weren’t so tired. And I could find some.

So, it turns out Uncle Francesco didn’t appreciate Amelie saying he didn’t care about the people of Genovia. He told her that if she really cared about the people of Genovia, she’d step down and let him rule. Because she’s just a girl who doesn’t have any idea what she’s doing.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I guess Amelie had more of an idea about what she was doing than she let on, because she drew up ANOTHER executive order—this one was to close all Genovian roads and ports. No one was allowed in or out of the country. She did this because she thought it might do a little more to reduce the spread of the plague than burning all the books in the country.

Ha! Take that, Francesco, you loser!

Also, she had the best mousers in the city brought to the palace. Because she couldn’t help noticing that there’d been no outbreaks of the disease in places where there were cats—like back at the convent, where she’d left Agnès-Claire.

For a girl who’d lived in the 1600s back when they didn’t know what germs were, Princess Amelie was pretty smart.

Oh, and she had her uncle thrown out of the castle.

Man. And I thought MY family was dysfunctional.

Tuesday, September 21, Intro to Creative Writing

My relatives turn out not to be the only ones conspiring against me. The minute I walked into school today, Principal Gupta was waiting for me. She crooked her finger at me to follow her into her office. Lars and I exchanged panicky looks, like—Uh-oh!I couldn’t figure out what we’d done now.

Or whatI’d done, anyway. I was sure Principal Gupta must have found out about the time I pulled the fire alarm when there wasn’t really a fire. True, that was a year ago, but maybe that’s how long it had taken them to go through all the video surveillance of the hallways or something….

But it turned out to have nothing to do with that. Instead, she confiscated my journal.

I am writing this in my Chemistry notebook right now.

Principal Gupta said, “Mia, I understand you’re going through a rough time right now. But your grades are slipping. You’re a junior in high school. Soon colleges will be looking at your transcripts.”

I wanted to point out to her what she and everyone else knows perfectly well: that I am going to get into every college I apply to. Because I’m a princess. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. I mean, even Trisha knows it.

“I understand from Mrs. Potts,” Principal Gupta went on, “that you were even writing in your journal during physical education class the other day. This can’t go on. You can’t expect to be able to slide by just because you’re a minor celebrity, Mia.”

Talk about unfair! I have never tried to slide by on my celebrity, however minor!

“Consider writing in your journal during classverboten from this moment on,” Principal Gupta said. “I am holding on to your journal—don’t worry, I will NOT read it—until classes let out for the day. You may have it back then. And kindly do NOT bring it to school again tomorrow. Is that understood?”