Princess in Love (The Princess Diaries 3)

We probably would have talked longer, but right then my mom yelled at me to get off line, since she’s waiting to hear from Mr. Gianini, who, surprisingly, still wasn’t home from school, even though it was past dinnertime. So I logged off.

This is the second time Michael’s asked if I’m going to the Winter Carnival. What’s up with that?

Friday, December 12, 9 p.m., the loft

Now we know why Mr. G was so late getting home:

He stopped along the way to buy a Christmas tree.

Not just any Christmas tree, either, but a twelve-footer that must be at least six feet wide at the base.

I didn’t say anything negative, of course, because my mom was so happy and excited about it, and immediately lugged out all of her Dead Celebrity Christmas ornaments (my mom doesn’t use pretty glass balls or tinsel on her Christmas tree, like normal people. Instead, she paints pieces of tin with the likenesses of celebrities who have died that year, and hangs those on the tree. Which is why we probably have the only tree in North America with ornaments commemorating Richard and Pat Nixon, Elvis, Audrey Hepburn, Kurt Cobain, Jim Henson, John Belushi, Rock Hudson, Alec Guiness, Divine, John Lennon, and many, many more).

And Mr. Gianini kept looking over at me, to see if I was happy, too. He got the tree, he said, because he knew what a bad day I’d had, and he didn’t want it to be a total loss.

Mr. G, of course, has no idea what my English term paper topic is.

What was I supposed to say? I mean, he’d already gone out and bought it, and you know a tree that size had to have cost a lot of money. And he’d meant to do a nice thing. He really had.

Still, I wish the people around here would consult me about things before just going out and doing them. Like the whole pregnancy thing, and now this tree. If Mr. G had asked me, I would have been like, Let’s go to the Big Kmart on Astor Place and get a nice fake tree so we don’t contribute to the destruction of the polar bear’s natural habitat, okay?

Only he didn’t ask me.

And the truth is, even if he had, my mom would never have gone for it. Her favorite part of Christmas is lying on the floor with her head under the tree, gazing up through the branches and inhaling the sweet tangy smell of pine sap. She says it’s the only memory of her Indiana childhood she actually likes.

It’s hard to think about the polar bears when your mom says something like that.

Saturday, December 13, 2 p.m., Lilly’s apartment

Well, the first meeting of the Students Against the Corporatization of Albert Einstein High School is a complete bust.

That’s because nobody showed up but me and Boris Pelkowski. I am a little miffed that Kenny didn’t come. You would think that if he really loves me as much as he says he does, he would take any opportunity whatsoever to be near me, even a boring meeting of the Students Against the Corporatization of Albert Einstein High School.

But I guess even Kenny’s love is not that great. As should be obvious to me by now, considering the fact that there are exactly six days until the Nondenominational Winter Dance, and Kenny STILL HASN’T ASKED ME IF I WANT TO GO WITH HIM.

Not that I’m worried, or anything. I mean, a girl who set off a fire alarm AND smashed Lana Weinberger’s cell phone, worried about not having a date to a stupid dance?

All right. I’m worried.

But not worried enough to pull a Sadie Hawkins and ask him to the dance.

Lilly is pretty much inconsolable over the fact that no one but Boris and me showed up for her meeting. I tried to tell her that everybody is too busy studying for finals to worry about privatization at the moment, but she doesn’t seem to care. Right now she is sitting on the couch, with Boris speaking to her in a soothing voice. Boris is pretty gross and all—with his sweaters that he always tucks into his pants, and that weird retainer his orthodontist makes him wear—but you can tell he genuinely loves Lilly. I mean, look at the tender way he is gazing at her as she sobs about how she is going to call her congressmember.

It makes my heart hurt, looking at Boris looking at Lilly.

I guess I must be jealous. I want a boy to look at me like that. And I don’t mean Kenny, either. I mean a boy who I actually like back, as more than just a friend.

I can’t take it anymore. I am going into the kitchen to see what Maya, the Moscovitzes’ housekeeper, is doing. Even helping to wash things has to be better than this.

Saturday, December 13, 2:30 p.m., Lilly’s apartment

Maya wasn’t in the kitchen. She was here, in Michael’s room, putting away his school uniform, which she just finished ironing. Maya is going around picking up Michael’s things and telling me about her son Manuel. Thanks to the help of the Drs. Moscovitz, Manuel was recently released from the prison in the Dominican Republic where he’d been wrongfully held for suspicion of having committed crimes against the state. Now Manuel is starting his own political party, and Maya is just as proud as can be, except she is worried he might end up back in prison if he doesn’t tone down the anti-government stuff a little.

Manuel and Lilly have a lot in common, I guess.

Maya’s stories about Manuel are always interesting, but it is much more interesting to be in Michael’s room. I have been in it before, of course, but never while he was gone (he is at school, even though it is Saturday, working in the computer lab on his project for the Carnival; apparently the school’s modem is faster than his. Also, I suppose, though I hate to admit it, he and Judith Gershner can freely practice their downloading there, without fear of parental interruption).

So I am lying on Michael’s bed while Maya putters around, folding shirts and muttering about sugar, one of her native land’s main exports and apparently a source of some consternation to her son’s political platform, while Michael’s dog, Pavlov, sits next to me, panting on my face. I can’t help thinking, This is what it’s like to be Michael: This is what Michael sees when he looks up at his ceiling at night (he has put glow-in-the-dark stars up there, in the form of the spiral galaxy Andromeda) and This is how Michael’s sheets smell (springtime fresh, thanks to the detergent Maya uses) and This is what the view of Michael’s desk looks like from his bed.