Meg Cabot - Princess in the Spotlight

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. The Moscovitzes are big fans of my mother’s work. One of her best paintings, Woman Enjoying a Quick Snack at Starbucks, is hanging in their dining room.

“We’ll be there,” Lilly’s father said.

Then he and his wife turned back to their magazines, so I hurried into the kitchen.

I found an eggplant in the vegetable crisper. I hid it under my shirt so the Drs. Moscovitz wouldn’t see me sneaking back into their daughter’s room holding a giant ovoid fruit, something sure to cause unwanted questions. While I carried it, I thought, This is how my mother is going to look in a few months. It wasn’t a very comforting thought. I don’t think my mother is going to dress any more conservatively while pregnant than she did not pregnant.

Which is to say, not very.

Then, while Lilly narrated gravely into the microphone about how Mia Thermopolis was about to strike a blow for good girls everywhere, and Shameeka filmed, I opened the window, made sure no innocent bystanders were below, and then. . . .

“Bomb’s away,” I said, like in the movies.

It was kind of cool seeing this huge purple eggplant—it was the size of a football—tumbling over and over in the air as it fell. There are enough streetlamps onFifth Avenue , where the Moscovitzes live, for us to see it as it plummeted downward, even though it was night. Down and down the eggplant went, past the windows of all the psychoanalysts and investment bankers (the only people who can afford apartments in Lilly’s building) until suddenly—

SPLAT!

The eggplant hit the sidewalk.

Only it didn’t just hit the sidewalk. It exploded on the sidewalk, sending bits of eggplant flying everywhere—mostly all over an M1 city bus that was driving by at the time, but quite a lot all over a Jaguar that had been idling nearby.

While I was leaning out the window, admiring the splatter pattern the eggplant’s pulp had made all over the street and sidewalk, the driver-side door of the Jaguar opened up, and a man got out from behind the wheel, just as the doorman to Lilly’s building stepped out from beneath the awning over the front doors, and looked up—

Suddenly, someone threw an arm around my waist and yanked me backward, right off my feet.

“Get down!” Michael hissed, pulling me down to the parquet.

We all ducked. Well, Lilly, Michael, Shameeka, Ling Su, and Tina ducked. I was already on the floor.

Where had Michael come from? I hadn’t even known he was home—and I’d asked, believe me, on account of the whole running-down-the-hallway-naked thing. Just in case, and all.

But Lilly had said he was at a lecture on quasars over atColumbia and wouldn’t be home for hours.

“Are you guys stupid, or what?” Michael wanted to know. “Don’t you know, besides the fact that it’s a good way to kill someone, it’s also against the law to drop things out a window inNew York City ?”

“Oh, Michael,” Lilly said, disgustedly. “Grow up. It was just a common garden vegetable.”

“I’m serious.” Michael looked mad. “If anyone saw Mia do that just now, she could be arrested.”

“No, she couldn’t,” Lilly said. “She’s a minor.”

“She could still go to juvenile court. You’d better not be planning on airing that footage on your show,” Michael said.

Oh, my God, Michael was defending my honor! Or at least trying to make sure I didn’t end up in juvenile court. It was just so sweet. So . . .well, Jo-C-rox of him.

Lilly went, “I most certainly am.”

“Well, you’d better edit out the parts that show Mia’s face.”

Lilly stuck her chin out. “No way.”

“Lilly, everybody knows who Mia is. If you air that segment, it will be all over the news that the princess of Genovia was caught on tape dropping projectiles out the window of her friend’s high-rise apartment. Get a clue, will you?”

Michael had let go of my waist, I noticed, with regret.

“Lilly, Michael’s right,” Tina Hakim Baba said. “We better edit that part out. Mia doesn’t need any more publicity than she has already.”

And Tina didn’t even know about the TwentyFour/Seven thing.

Lilly got up and stomped back toward the window. She started to lean out—checking, I guess, to see whether the doorman and the owner of the Jaguar were still there—

but Michael jerked her back.

“Rule Number One,” he said. “If you insist on dropping something out the window, never, ever check to see if anybody is standing down there, looking up. They will see you look out and figure out what apartment you are in. Then you will be blamed for dropping whatever it was. Because no one but the guilty party would be looking out the window under such circumstances.”

“Wow, Michael,” Shameeka said admiringly. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

Not only that. He sounded like Dirty Harry.

Which was just how I felt when I dropped that eggplant out the window. Like Dirty Harry.

And it had felt good—but not quite so good as having Michael rush to my defense like that.

Michael said, “Let’s just say I used to have a very keen interest in experimenting with the earth’s gravitational pull.”

Wow. There is so much I don’t know about Lilly’s brother. Like he used to be a juvenile delinquent!

Could a computer genius-slash-juvenile delinquent ever be interested in a flat-chested princess like myself? He did save my life tonight (well, okay: he saved me from possible community service).

It’s not a French kiss, or a slow dance, or even an admission he’s the author of that anonymous letter.

But it’s a start.

I know what yer thinkin’:

Did he fire six shots, or only five?

Frankly, in all the confusion,

I kinda lost track myself.

But you gotta ask yourself one question:

( beat )

Do I feel lucky?

( long pause )

Well?

( long pause )

Do ya, punk?

THINGS TO DO

1. English journal

2. Stop thinking about that stupid letter

3. Ditto Michael Moscovitz

4. Ditto the interview

5. Ditto Mom

6. Change cat litter

7. Drop off laundry

8. Get super to put lock on bathroom door

9. Buy: Dishwashing liquid

Q-tips

Canvas stretchers (for Mom)

That stuff you put on your fingernails that

makes them taste bad

Something nice for Mr. Gianini, to say

welcome to the family

Something nice for Dad, to say don’t worry,

someday you, too, will find true love

Sunday, October 26,7 p.m.

I was really afraid that when I got home my mom was going to be disappointed in me.

Not yell at me. My mom is really not a yelling kind of person.

But she does get disappointed in me, like when I do something stupid like not call and tell her where I am if I am out late (which, given my social life, or lack thereof, hardly ever happens).

But I did screw up this time, and big time. It was really, really hard to leave the Moscovitzes’ apartment this morning and come home, knowing the potential for disappointment that awaited me there.