Princess in the Spotlight (The Princess Diaries 2)

I always thought it’s because he just never asked her.

Maybe that’s why she told me not to tell anyone just yet. She wants to let my dad know in her own way, she says.

All of this excitement has given me a headache.

Tuesday, October 21, 2 a.m.

Oh, my God. I just realized that if my mom marries Mr. Gianini, it means he’ll be living here. I mean, my mom would never move to Brooklyn, where he lives. She always says the subway aggravates her antipathy toward the corporate hordes.

I can’t believe it. I’m going to have to eat breakfast every morning with my Algebra teacher.

And what happens if I accidentally see him naked, or something? My mind could be permanently scarred.

I’d better make sure the lock on the bathroom door is fixed before he moves in.

Now my throat hurts, in addition to my head.

Tuesday, October 21, 9 a.m.

When I woke up this morning, my throat hurt so much, I couldn’t even talk. I could only croak.

I tried croaking for my mom for a while, but she couldn’t hear me.

So then I tried banging on the wall, but all that did was make my Greenpeace poster fall down.

Finally I had no choice but to get up. I wrapped my comforter around me so I wouldn’t get a chill and get even sicker, and went down the hall to my mom’s room.

To my horror, there was not one lump in my mom’s bed, but TWO!!!! Mr. Gianini stayed over!!!!

Oh, well. It’s not like he hasn’t already promised to make an honest woman of her.

Still, it’s a little embarrassing to stumble into your mom’s bedroom at six in the morning and find your Algebra teacher in there with her. I mean, that kind of thing might warp a lesser person than myself.

But whatever. I stood there croaking in the doorway, totally too freaked out to go in, and finally my mom cracked an eye open. Then I whispered to her that I was sick, and told her that she’d have to call the attendance office and explain that I wouldn’t be in school today.

I also asked her to call and cancel my limo, and to let Lilly know we wouldn’t be stopping by to pick her up.

I also told her that if she was going to go to the studio, she’d have to get my dad or Lars (please not Grandmère) to come to the loft and make sure no one tried to kidnap or assassinate me while she was gone and I was in my weakened physical state.

I think she understood me, but it was hard to tell.

I tell you, this princess business is no joke.

Later on Tuesday

My mom stayed home from the studio today.

I croaked to her that she shouldn’t. She has a show at the Mary Boone Gallery in about a month, and I know she only has about half the paintings done that she’s supposed to have. If she should happen to succumb to morning sickness, she is one dead realist.

But she stayed home anyway. I think she feels guilty. I think she thinks my getting sick is her fault. Like all my anxiety over the state of her womb weakened my autoimmune system, or something.

Which totally isn’t true. I’m sure whatever it is I have, I picked it up at school. Albert Einstein High School is one giant petri dish of bacteria, if you ask me, what with the astonishing number of mouth-breathers who go there.

Anyway, about every ten minutes, my guilt-ridden mother comes in and asks me if I want anything. I forgot she has a Florence Nightingale complex. She keeps making me tea, and cinnamon toast with the crusts cut off. This is very nice, I must say.

Except then she tried to get me to let some zinc dissolve on my tongue, as one of her friends told her this is supposedly a good way to combat the common cold.

That was not so nice.