Meg Cabot: Princess' Diaries

But Dad didn’t seem all that impressed by Iceland. I suppose by comparison, Iceland does make every other country look sucky. The country Dad lives in is pretty small, though. I would think if the opera went there, about 80 percent of the population would attend, which would certainly be something to be proud of.

I only shared this information with him because he is a politician, and I thought it might give him some ideas about how to make things better in Genovia, where he lives. But I guess Genovia doesn’t need to be better. Genovia’s number one import is tourists. I know this because I had to do a fact sheet on every country in Europe in the seventh grade, and Genovia was right up there with Disneyland as far as income from the tourist trade is concerned. That’s probably why people in Genovia don’t have to pay taxes: The government already has enough money. This is called a principality. The only other one is Monaco. My dad says we have a lot of cousins in Monaco, but so far I haven’t met any of them, not even at Grandmère’s.

I suggested to Dad that next summer, instead of spending it with him and Grandmère at her French chateau, Miragnac, we go to Iceland. We’d have to leave my grandmother at the chateau, of course. She’d hate Iceland. She hates any place where you can’t order up a decent Sidecar, which is her favorite drink, twenty-four hours a day.

All Dad said was, "We’ll talk about that some other time," and hung up.

Mom is so right about him.

Absolute value: the distance that a given number is from zero on a number line . . . always a positive

Monday, September 29, G & T

Today I watched Mr. Gianini very closely for signs that he might not have had as good a time on his date with my mom as my mom did. He seemed to be in a really good mood, though. During class, while we were working on the quadratic formula (what happened to FOIL? I was just starting to get the hang of it, and all of a sudden there’s some NEW thing; nowonderI’m flunking), he asked if anybody had gone out for a part in the fall musical,My Fair Lady.

Then later he said, in the way he does when he gets excited about something, "You know who would be a good Eliza Doolittle? Mia, I think you would."

I thought I would totally die. I know Mr. Gianini was only trying to be nice—I mean, he is dating my mom, after all—but he was SO far off: First of all because of course they already held auditions, and even if I could’ve gone out for a part (which I couldn’t, because I’m flunking Algebra, hello, Mr. Gianini, remember?) I NEVER would’ve gotten one, let alone the LEAD. I can’t sing. I can barely eventalk.

Even Lana Weinberger, who always got the lead in junior high, didn’t get the lead. It went to some senior girl. Lana plays a maid, a spectator at the Ascot Races, and a Cockney hooker. Lilly is house manager. Her job is to flick the lights on and off at the end of intermission.

I was so freaked out by what Mr. Gianini said I couldn’t evensayanything. I just sat there and felt myself turning all red. Maybe that was why later, when Lilly and I went by my locker at lunch, Lana, who was there waiting for Josh, was all, "Oh, hello,Amelia,"in her snottiest voice, even though nobody has called me Amelia (except Grandmère) since kindergarten, when I asked everybody not to.

Then, as I bent over to get my money out of my backpack, Lana must have got a good look down my blouse, because all of a sudden she goes, "Oh, how sweet. I see we still can’t fit into a bra. Might I suggest Band-Aids?"

I would have hauled off and slugged her—well, probably not; the Drs. Moscovitz say I have issues about confrontation—if Josh Richter hadn’t walked up AT THAT VERY MOMENT. I knew he totally heard, but all he said was, "Can I get by here?" to Lilly, since she was blocking his path to his locker.

I was ready to go slinking down to the cafeteria and forget the whole thing—God, that’s all I need, my lack of chest pointed outright in frontof Josh Richter!—but Lilly couldn’t leave well enough alone. She got all red in the face and said to Lana, "Why don’t you do us all a favor and go curl up someplace and die, Weinberger?"

Well, nobody tells Lana Weinberger to go curl up someplace and die. I mean, nobody. Not if she doesn’t want her name written up all over the walls of the girls’ room. Not that this would be such a heinous thing—I mean, no boys are going to see it in the girls’ room—but I sort of like keeping my name off walls, for the most part.

But Lilly doesn’t care about things like that. I mean, she’s short and sort of round and kind of resembles a pug, but she totally doesn’t care how she looks. I mean, she has her own TV show, and guys call in all the time and say how ugly they think she is, and ask her to lift her shirt up (sheisn’t flat-chested; she wears a C cup already), and she just laughs and laughs.

Lilly isn’t afraid of anything.

So when Lana Weinberger started in on her for telling her to curl up and die, Lilly just blinked up at her and was like, "Bite me."

The whole thing would have escalated into this giant girl fight—Lilly has seen every single episode ofXena: Warrior Princess,and can kick box like nobody’s business—if Josh Richter hadn’t slammed his locker door closed and said "I’m outta here" in a disgusted voice. That was when Lana just dropped it like a hot potato and scooted after him, going, "Josh, wait up. Wait up, Josh!"

Lilly and I just stood there looking at each other like we couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. Whoarethese people, and why do I have to be incarcerated with them on a daily basis?

HOMEWORK

Algebra: problems 1–12, pg. 79 English: proposal World Civ: questions at end of Chapter 4 G & T: none French: useavoirin neg. sentence, rd. lessons one to three, pas de plus Biology: none

B = {x|x is an integer}

D = {2,3,4}

4ED

5ED

E = {x|x is an integer greater than 4 but less than 258}

Tuesday, September 30

Something really weird just happened. I got home from school, and my mom was there (she’s usually at her studio all day during the week). She had this funny look on her face, and then she went, "I have to talk to you."

She wasn’t humming anymore, and she hadn’t cooked anything, so I knew it was serious.

I was kind of hoping Grandmère was dead, but I knew it had to be much worse than that, and I was worried something had happened to Fat Louie, like he’d swallowed another sock. The last time he did that, the vet charged us $1,000 to remove the sock from his small intestines, and he walked around with a funny look on his face for about a month.