Meg Cabot - Princess in the Spotlight

And I am really sick now! My temperature has gone up to ninety-nine point eight! Soon it will reach one hundred.

If this were an episode of ER, they’d have practically put me on a respirator already.

There is no way I’ll be able to be interviewed by Beverly Bellerieve now.NO WAY .

Tee hee.

My mom has her humidifier in here, going on full blast. Lilly says my room is just likeVietnam , and why don’t I at least crack the window, for God’s sake.

I never thought of it before, but Lilly and Grandmère sort of have a lot in common. For instance, Grandmère called a little while ago. When I told her how sick I was, and how I probably wouldn’t be able to make it to the interview on Saturday, she actually chastised me.

That’s right. Chastised me, like it was my fault I got sick. Then she starts going on about how on her wedding day she had a fever of one hundred and two, but did she let that stop her from standing through a two-hour wedding ceremony, then riding in an open coach through the streets of Genovia waving to the populace, and then dining on prosciutto and melon at her reception and waltzing until four in the morning?

No, you might not be too surprised to learn. It did not.

That, Grandmère said, is because a princess does not use poor health as an excuse to shirk her duties to her people.

As if the people of Genovia care about my doing some lousy interview for Twenty-Four/Seven. They don’t even get that show there. I mean, except for the people who have satellite dishes, maybe.

Lilly is just about as unsympathetic as Grandmère. In fact, Lilly isn’t really a very soothing visitor to have at all when you are sick. She suggested that it was possible that I have consumption, just like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I said I thought it was probably only bronchitis, and Lilly said that’s probably what Elizabeth Barrett Browning thought, too, before she died.

HOMEWORK

Algebra: problems at the end of Chapter 10

English: in your journal, list your favorite TV show, movie, book, food, etc.

World Civ: one thousand word essay explaining the

conflict betweenIran andAfghanistan

G&T: as if

French: ecrivez une vignette amusant (Oh, right)

Biology: endocrine system (get answers from Kenny)

God! What are they trying to do over there, anyway? Kill me?

Wednesday, October 22

This morning my mom called my dad where he’s staying at the Plaza, and made him bring the limo over so I could go to the doctor. This is because when she took my temperature after I woke up, it was one hundred and two, just like Grandmère’s on her wedding day.

Only I can tell you, I didn’t feel much like waltzing. I could hardly even get dressed. I was so feverish I actually put on one of the outfits Grandmère bought me. So there I was in Chanel from head to toe, with my eyes all glassy and this sheen of sweat all over me. My dad jumped about a foot and a half when he saw me, I think because he thought for a minute that I was Grandmère.

Only of course I am much taller than Grandmère. Though my hair isn’t as big.

It turns out that Dr. Fung is one of the few people inAmerica who hadn’t heard yet that I’m a princess, so we had to sit in the waiting room for like ten minutes before he could see me. My dad spent the ten minutes talking to the receptionist. That’s because she was wearing an outfit that showed her navel, even though it is practically winter.

And even though my dad is completely bald and wears suits all the time instead of khakis like a normal dad, you could tell the receptionist was completely into him. That’s because in spite of his incipient European-ness, my dad is still something of a hottie.

Lars, who is also a hottie in a different sort of way (being extremely large and hairy), sat next to me, reading Parenting magazine. I could tell he would have preferred the latest copy of Soldier of Fortune, but they don’t have a subscription to that at the SoHo Family Medical Practice.

Finally Dr. Fung saw me. He took my temperature (101.7) and felt my glands to see if they were swollen (they were). Then he tried to take a throat culture to check for strep.

Only when he jabbed that thing into my throat, it made me gag so hard, I started coughing uncontrollably. I couldn’t stop coughing, so I told him between coughs that I was going to get a drink of water. I think I must have been delusional because of my fever and all, since what I did instead of getting water was walk right out of the doctor’s office. I got back into the limo and told the chauffeur to take me to Emerald Planet right away, so I could get a smoothie.

Fortunately the chauffeur knew better than to take me somewhere without my bodyguard. He got on the radio and said some stuff, and then Lars came out to the limo with my dad, who asked me what on earth I thought I was doing.

I thought about asking him the exact same thing, only about the receptionist with the pierced belly button. But my throat hurt too much to talk.

Dr. Fung was pretty nice about it in the end. He gave up on the throat culture and just prescribed some antibiotics and this cough syrup with codeine in it—but not until he had one of his nurses take a picture of us shaking hands together inside the limo so he could hang it on his wall of celebrity photos. He has pictures of himself up there shaking hands with other famous patients of his, like Robert Goulet and Lou Reed.

Now that my raging fever has gone down, I can see that I was behaving completely irrationally. I would have to say that that trip to the doctor’s office was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Of course, there’ve been so many, it’s hard to tell where this one ranks. I think I would chalk it up there with the time I accidentally dropped my dinner plate in the buffet line at Lilly’s bat mitzvah, and everybody kept stepping in gefiltefish for the rest of the night.

MIA THERMOPOLIS’S TOP FIVE MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENTS

1. Josh Richter kissing me in front of the whole school while everyone looked at me.

2. The time when I was six and Grandmère ordered me to hug her sister, Tante Jean Marie, and I started to cry because I was afraid of Jean Marie’s mustache, and hurt Jean Marie’s feelings.

3. The time when I was seven and Grandmère forced me to attend a boring cocktail party she gave for all her friends, and I was so bored I picked up this little ivory coaster holder which was shaped like a rickshaw, and then I wheeled it around the coffee table, making noises like I was speaking Chinese, until all the coasters fell out the back of the rickshaw and rolled around on the floor very noisily, and everyone looked at me. (This is even more embarrassing when I think of it now, because imitating Chinese people is very rude, not to mention politically incorrect.)

4. The time when I was ten and Grandmère took me and some of my cousins to the beach and I forgot my bikini top and Grandmère wouldn’t let me go back to the chateau to get it, she said this was France for God’s sake and I should just go topless like everybody else, and even though I didn’t have anything more up there to show than I do now, I was mortified and wouldn’t take my shirt off and everyone looked at me because they thought I had a rash or disfiguring birthmark or a shriveled-up Siamese-twin fetus hanging off me.