Meg Cabot - Princess in Training

I don’t know why they had to call my mom and dad.

Nurse Lloyd says I should just rest quietly until they get here. She is keeping Grandmère out at my request. Not that it’s Grandmère’s fault, really. I mean, she was just trying to help. Lilly must have called her and told her about Lana’s pom-pom-shaped squeezy things. So Grandmère felt obligated to rush over here with something she thought I could hand out.

Because who DOESN’T want a pen that says PROPRIÉTÉ DU PALAIS ROYAL DE GENOVIA on it?

Really, none of this is anyone’s fault. Except my own. I should never have handed that paper in to Ms. Martinez. What was I THINKING? How could I for ONE MINUTE have thought that she would appreciate a paper comparing Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love with that of Britney Spears and Jason Allen Alexander? I mean, yeah, I poured my HEART and SOUL into it. I wanted the reader to feel Britney’s pain at the way she and Jason were torn apart by the media and her management and record company, so much that she had no choice but to rebound with Kevin. It’s so clear to me that these two childhood sweethearts were meant for each other….

I should have known Ms. Martinez wouldn’t share my concern for Britney. It’s quite clear she’s never REALLY listened to “Toxic.”

Oh, no.

SOMEONE’S COMING!!! MUST GET CLOTH BACK ON HEAD!!!! Friday, September 11, nurse’s office, later

It was just my dad. I asked him how he got here so fast, and he said because he’d been on his way to the French mission to argue with them about voting Genovia out of the EU.

This just made me feel worse. Because it reminded me of how I’d let my own people down so very badly with the whole snail thing.

Dad said not to worry about it, that if anyone should be voted out of the EU it should be Monaco for letting Jacques Cousteau dump South American seaweed into the Mediterranean in the first place, and also France, for sitting on their hands about it for a decade afterward. But, as he pointed out, that’s what France is best at, after all.

I apologized to Dad for interrupting his busy day of politicking, but he just patted my hand and said everyone is entitled to a “crying jag” now and then. I asked him if that was Nurse Lloyd’s clinical diagnosis of what had happened to me, and he said, “Not exactly,” but that he’s seen a lot of crying jags in his day. But never in someone who hadn’t had more Genovian prosecco than was good for her.

It’s very embarrassing to blubber like a big baby in front of the whole school, not to mention doing it later, in front of your dad. Especially when, you know, there’s no Kleenex whatsoever around because I had used it all up already. So, I had to blow my snot into my dad’s silk show-hanky. Not that he looked like he minded too much. He’ll probably just throw it away and buy a new one, like Britney Spears does with her underwear. It’s nice to be a prince. Or a pop star.

Anyway, Dad was way concerned and kept asking me what was wrong. What’s wrong, Dad? Oh, you mean other than everything?

Of course, the only thing I could TELL him about was the Ms. Martinez thing. Because I knew if I told him about how much the whole election thing was bumming me out, he wouldn’t understand, and he’d just say something all fathery like, “Oh, Mia, don’t put yourself down. You know you’ll do great.”

And God knows I couldn’t tell him about the Michael thing. I mean, I love my dad. I don’t want to cause his head to explode.

At first my dad totally didn’t believe me. You know, that I could get a B on an English paper. I had to pull out my paper and SHOW him.

And then his eyes got all squinty—but I think mostly because he’d left his reading glasses back in the limo—and he cleared his throat a bunch of times.

Then he said some stuff about how this was what he was getting for his twenty thousand dollars a year and what kind of world was it where a little girl’s dream could get shot down like so much skeet and that if this Ms. Martinez person thinks she can get away with this, she has another think coming.

So, you know. That was kind of entertaining for awhile, watching him hop around, all mad.

Finally, the nurse heard him, and she came in and shooed him out.

While Nurse Lloyd was shooing my dad out, though, my mom managed to sneak in, looking all flustered, with Rocky strapped to her. So I sat up and smelled his head for a while, because Rocky’s head smells almost as good as Michael’s neck, but in a much different way, of course.

Although, the smell of Rocky’s head cannot soothe my fractious soul the way the smell of Michael’s neck can.

While I smelled Rocky’s head, my mom said, “Mia, this is a really bad time for you to have a breakdown. Our flight to Indiana leaves in two hours.”

I assured my mom that I wasn’t having a breakdown, that it was just a crying jag. I didn’t mention what had brought it on. You know, the part about what Lana had told me about college boys. And then Ms. Martinez shooting down my dreams of being a writer. Instead, I just said maybe I still had jet lag from my summer in Genovia, and all.

“This isn’t jet lag,” my mother said, scornfully. “This has Clarisse Renaldo written all over it.”

Well, I hadn’t wanted to say so out loud. At least, not to my mom, who has enough reasons not to like Grandmère.

But it IS true that the straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing Grandmère passing out pens in the hallway.

“She means well,” I pointed out to my mom.

“Does she?” Mom looked dubious.

But I assured my mom that this time, Grandmère had only the good of the crown at heart. After all, if my student electoral campaign kept the press away from the story about Genovia being voted out of the EU, it was totally worth it.

Sort of.

Mom didn’t look like she believed this, though.

“Mia, if you want to quit this election thing, just say the word. I’ll make it happen.”

My mom can look pretty fierce when she wants to—even with a baby as adorable as Rocky strapped to her chest. Really, if I had to make a choice between debating Lana and debating my mom about something, I’d pick Lana every time.

“No, Mom, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay. Really. So…are you going to look up Wendell when you get back to Versailles?”

My mom was busy fussing with Rocky’s foot, which had gotten all tangled up in the Tibetan prayer flags she had hanging from his carrier. “Who?”

“Wendell Jenkins.” God! I can’t believe she doesn’t even remember the man to whom she gave the gift of the flower of her virginity. “He still lives there. He and April. He works for the power company. And did you know April was a corn princess?”

Mom looked amused. “Really? How do you know all this, Mia?”

“Yahoo! People Search,” I said. “If you run into April, be sure to tell her, you know, how you’re the mother of the princess of Genovia. That’s a lot better than being a corn princess, even if we ARE about to be thrown out of the EU.”

“I’ll be sure to,” Mom said. “You’re positive you’re going to be okay? Because I won’t go to Versailles if you don’t want me to.”

I assured Mom I would be fine. At which point Nurse Lloyd came back in and, finding my mother there, basically assured her of the same thing. Then, after letting Nurse Lloyd coo over Rocky for a while—because he is the cutest baby there ever was, and no one who sees him can HELP but coo over him—Mom left, and I was all alone with Nurse Lloyd again.

Which, you know, reminded me that there was something I needed to know. And a member of the health profession was the perfect person to ask, since I couldn’t go to Yahoo! Health as there wasn’t a computer handy.