Meg Cabot - Party Princess

And SHE always gets what SHE wants. Just like GRANDMÈRE always gets what SHE wants.

So I told Kenny I wouldn’t do it unless he did tonight’s homework, too.

He looked at me kind of funny, but he said he would. I guess he looked at me funny because he does our homework EVERY night.

Still. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to catch on to how society works. All this time, I thought it was Jungian transcendence I needed in order to find serenity and contentment.

But Grandmère—and Lana Weinberger, of all people—have shown me the error of my ways.

It’s not about forming a base of roots such as trust and compassion in order to reap the fruits of joy and love.

No. It’s about the laws of supply and demand. If you demand something and can provide proper incentive to get people to hand it over, they’ll supply it.

And the equilibrium remains stable.

It’s sort of amazing. I had no idea Grandmère was such an economic genius.

Or that LANA would ever teach ME something.

It sort of casts everything in a new light.

And I do mean everything .

HOMEWORK

PE: GYM SHORTS!!! GYM SHORTS!!!! GYM SHORTS!!!!!

U.S. Economics: Read Chapter 9 for Monday

English: Pages 155–175, O Pioneers

French: Vocabulaire 3ème étape

G&T: Find that water bra Lilly bought me that time as a joke. Wear it to the party.

Geometry: Chapter 18

Earth Science: Who cares? Kenny’s doing it! HA-HA-HA-HA

Friday, March 5, the Grand Ballroom, the Plaza

For the first rehearsal ever of Braid! we had what Grandmère called a “read-through.” We were supposed to read through the script together as a group, each actor saying his or her lines out loud, the way he or she would if we were performing the show onstage.

Can I just say read-throughs are very boring?

I had my journal tucked up behind my script so no one could see that I was writing instead of following along. Although it was kind of awkward to shift the script out from behind my journal when one of my cues came up.

A cue is the line before you are supposed to say yours. I am finding out all sorts of theater-y stuff today.

Like, Grandmère, while she may have written the dialogue for Braid! , she didn’t write the MUSIC. The music was composed by this guy named Phil. Phil is the same guy who was playing the piano to accompany us at the audition yesterday. Grandmère, it turns out, paid Phil a ton of money to write music to go with her lyrics for all the songs in Braid!

She says she got his name off the employment board at Hunter College.

Phil doesn’t look like he’s had much time to enjoy his newfound cash windfall, though. Basically, he pulled an all-nighter to compose the music for Braid! , and it also looks like he still hasn’t really caught up with his sleep. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble staying awake during the read-through.

He wasn’t the only one. Señor Eduardo didn’t open his eyes ONCE after the play’s first line (uttered by Rosagunde: “Oh, la, what a joy it is to live in this sleepy, peaceful village tucked against the seaside.” CUE: FIRST SONG).

Possibly, Señor Eduardo’s dead.

Well, that wouldn’t be so bad. Everybody could be all, “He died doing what he loved best,” like they did in that horrible TV movie where the girl fell out of a tree and broke her neck the day she got a new horse.

Oh, no, wait, he just snored. So he’s not dead after all.

Shoot, my line:

“Oh, Gustav, dare not call yourself a peasant! For the shoes you make for our horses lend strength to their step, and the swords you forge for our people lend courage to their fight for freedom against tyranny!”

Then it was J.P.’s turn to say his line. You know, J.P.’s not a bad actor. And I can’t help noticing that he had HIS Mead composition notebook tucked up in front of HIS script!

You know what would be weird? If he’s writing about ME at the same time I’m writing about HIM. Like, what if J.P. is the boy me? We do have a lot in common—except, you know, he’s not a royal.

Still, I was talking to him a little bit before rehearsal started (because I saw that everyone else was ignoring him—well, Boris and Tina were busy making out, as they do much more now that Boris no longer wears a bionater, and Lilly was going over her editorial remarks about Kenny’s dwarf star thesis with him, and Perin was trying to convince Grandmère that she’s a girl, not a guy, and Ling Su was trying to keep Amber Cheeseman away from me, as she has promised she will do in her capacity as chorus member) and J.P. told me that he has no real interest in acting—that the only reason he has auditioned for every single show the AEHS drama club has ever put on is because his mom and dad are nuts for the theater, and always wanted to have a son in the business.

“But I’d rather write for a living, you know,” J.P. said. “Not, you know, that there are a lot of jobs out there for poets. But I mean, I’d rather be a writer than an actor. Because actors, when you think about it, their job is just to interpret stuff somebody else has written. They have no POWER. The real power’s in the words they’re saying, which someone else has written. That’s what I’m interested in. Being the power behind the Julia Robertses and Jude Laws of the world.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is so freaky!!!! Because I said almost the exact same thing once!!!! I think.

Plus, I understand what it feels like, that pressure to do something just to make your parents happy. Case in point: princess lessons. Oh, and not flunking Geometry, even though it will do me no earthly good in my future.

The only problem is, even though he’s tried out for all the shows AEHS has put on, J.P.’s never gotten a single part. He thinks the reason is because of the Drama Club’s cliquishness.

“I mean, I guess if I REALLY wanted a part in one of their shows,” he told me, “I could have started trying to get in with their group—you know, sit with them at lunch, hang out with them on the steps before school, fetch coffee from Ho’s for them, get my nose pierced, start smoking clove cigarettes, and all of that. But the truth is, I really can’t stand actors. They’re so self-absorbed! I just get tired of being the audience for their performance pieces, you know? Because that’s basically what it’s like when you talk to one. Like they’re doing a monologue just for you.”

“Well,” I said, thinking of all the stories I’d read about teen actors in Us Weekly . “Maybe because they’re insecure. Most teens are, you know. Insecure, I mean.”

I didn’t mention that, of all the teens J.P. had ever spoken to, I am probably the one who is the MOST insecure. Not that I don’t have good reason to be insecure. I mean, how many other teens do you know who have no earthly clue how to party and who have grandmas who try to blackmail them?

“Maybe,” J.P. said. “Or maybe I’m just too critical. The truth is, I don’t think I’m really the club-joining type. I’m sort of more of a loner. In case you didn’t notice.”

J.P. grinned at me after he said that, a sort of sheepish grin. I could sort of start to see what Tina and Lilly were saying, about him being cute. He IS sort of cute. In a big, teddy-bearish sort of way.

And he’s right about actors. I mean, judging by what I’ve seen of them on talk shows. They never shut up about themselves!

And okay, I guess the interviewer is asking. But still.

Oops, my turn again:

“Handmaid, fetch me the strongest grappa from the storerooms! I shall teach this rogue what it means to trifle with the house of Renaldo.”