Meg Cabot - Princess' Diaries

My mom’s not like that. She ALWAYS checks.

So I knew it wasn’t fair to run off like that and make her worry. I didn’t care much then about what my dad thought. I was pretty much hating him by then. But I just had to be alone for a little while. I mean, it takes some getting used to, finding out you’re a princess. I guess some girls might like it, but not me. I’ve never been good at girly stuff, you know, like putting on makeup and wearing panty hose and stuff. I mean, I can do it, if I have to, but I’d rather not.

Much rather not.

Anyway, I don’t know how, but my feet sort of knew where they were going, and before I knew it I was at the zoo.

I love the Central Park Zoo. I always have, since I was a little kid. It’s way better than the Bronx Zoo, because it’s really small and cozy, and the animals are much friendlier, especially the seals and the polar bears. I love polar bears. At the Central Park Zoo, they have this one polar bear, and all he does all day long is the backstroke. I swear! He was on the news once because this animal psychologist was worried he was under too much stress. It must suck to have people looking at you all day. But then they bought him some toys, and after that he was all right. He just kicks back in his enclosure—they don’t have cages at the Central Park Zoo, they have enclosures—and watches you watching him. Sometimes he holds a ball while he does it. I love that bear.

So after I forked over a couple of dollars to get in—that’s the other good thing about the zoo: it’s cheap—I paid a little call on the polar bear. He appeared to be doing fine. Much better than I was, at the moment. I mean, his dad hadn’t told him he was the heir to the throne of anywhere. I wondered where that polar bear had come from. I hoped he was from Iceland.

After a while it got too crowded at the polar bear enclosure, so then I went into the penguin house. It smells kind of bad in here, but it’s fun. There are these windows that look underwater, so you can see the penguins swimming around, sliding on the rocks and having a good penguin time. Little kids put their hands on the glass, and when a penguin swims toward them, they start screaming. It totally cracks me up. There’s a bench you can sit on, too, and that’s where I’m sitting now, writing this. You get used to the smell after a while. I guess you can get used to anything.

Oh my God, I can’t believe I just wrote that! I will NEVER get used to being Princess Amelia Renaldo! I don’t even know who that is! It sounds like the name of some stupid line of makeup, or of somebody from a Disney movie who’s been missing and just recovered her memory, or something.

What am I going to do? I CAN’T move to Genovia, I just CAN’T!! Who would look after Fat Louie? My mom can’t. She forgets to feed herself, let alone a CAT.

I’m sure they won’t let me have a cat in the palace. At least, not a cat like Louie, who weighs twenty-five pounds and eats socks. He’d scare all the ladies-in-waiting.

Oh, God. What am I going to do?

If Lana Weinberger finds out about this, I’m dead.

Even Later on Thursday

Of course, I couldn’t hide out in the penguin house forever. Eventually, they flicked the lights and said the zoo was closing. I put my journal away and filed out with everybody else. I grabbed a downtown bus and went home, where I was sure I was going to get it BIG TIME from my mom.

What I didn’t count on was getting it from BOTH my parents at the same time. This was a first.

"Where have you been, young lady?" my mom wanted to know. She was sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, the telephone between them.

My dad said, at the exact same time, "We were worried sick!"

I thought I was in for the grounding of a lifetime, but all they wanted to know was whether I was all right. I assured them that I was and apologized for going all Jennifer Love Hewitt on them. I just needed to be alone, I said.

I was really worried they’d start in on me, but they totally didn’t. My mom did try to make me eat some Ramen, but I wouldn’t, because it was beef flavored. And then my dad offered to send his driver to Nobu to pick up some blackened sea bass, but I was like, "Really, Dad, I just want to go to bed." Then my mom started feeling my head and stuff, thinking I was sick. This nearly made me start crying again. I guess my dad recognized my expression from the Plaza, since all of a sudden he was like, "Helen, just leave her alone."

To my surprise, she did. And so I went into my bathroom and closed the door and took a long, hot bath, then got into my favorite pajamas, the cool red flannel ones, found Fat Louie where he was trying to hide under the futon couch (he doesn’t like my dad so much), and went to bed.

Before I fell asleep, I could hear my dad talking to my mom in the kitchen for a long, long time. His voice was rumbly, like thunder. It sort of reminded me of Captain Picard’s voice on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

My dad actually has a lot in common with Captain Picard. You know, he’s white and bald and has to rule over a small populace.

Except that Captain Picard always makes everything okay by the end of the episode, and I sincerely doubt everything will be okay for me.

Friday, October 3, Homeroom

Today when I woke up, the pigeons that live on the fire escape outside my window were cooing away (Fat Louie was on the windowsill—well, as much of him as could fit on the windowsill, anyway—watching them), and the sun was shining, and I actually got up on time and didn’t hit the snooze button seven thousand times. I took a shower and didn’t cut my legs shaving them, found a fairly unwrinkled blouse at the bottom of my closet, and even got my hair to look sort of halfway passable. I was in a good mood. It was Friday. Friday is my favorite day, besides Saturday and Sunday. Fridays always mean two days—two glorious, relaxing days—of NO Algebra are coming my way.

And then I walked out into the kitchen and there was all this pink light coming down through the skylight right on my mom, who was wearing her best kimono and making French toast using Egg Beaters instead of real eggs, even though I’m no longer ovo-lacto since I realized eggs aren’t fertilized so they could never have been baby chicks anyway.

And I was all set to thank her for thinking of me, and then I heard this rustle.

And there was my DAD sitting at the dining room table (well, really it’s just a table, since we don’t have a dining room, but whatever), reading The New York Times and wearing a suit.

A suit. At seven o’clock in the morning.

And then I remembered. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it: