Princess in Waiting (The Princess Diaries 4)

LINUX RULZ: Boris isn’t so bad, once you get to know him.

FT LOUIE : I know. He just doesn’t seem like the band type. All that Bartok.

LINUX RULZ : He plays a mean bluegrass, you know. Not that we’ll be playing any bluegrass in the band.

This was comforting to know.

LINUX RULZ : So will your grandmother let you off on time?

I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about.

FT LOUIE :What????

LINUX RULZ : On Friday. You’ve got princess lessons, right? That’s why you were asking about later showings of the movie, wasn’t it? You’re worried your grandmother isn’t going to let you out on time?

This is where I screwed up. You see, he had offered me the perfect out—I could have said, “Yes, I am,” and chances were, he’d have been like, “Okay, well, let’s make it another time, then.”

BUT WHAT IF THERE WERE NO OTHER TIME????

What if Michael, like Dave, just blew me off and found some other girl to take to the show????

So instead, I went

FT LOUIE : No, it will be okay. I think I can get off early.

WHY AM I SO STUPID???? WHY DID I WRITE THAT???? Because of COURSE I won’t be able to get off early, I will be at the stupid black-and-white ball ALL NIGHT!!!!!

I swear, I am such an idiot, I don’t even deserve to have a boyfriend.

Thursday, January 22, Homeroom

This morning at breakfast, Mr. G was all, “Has anyone seen my brown corduroy pants?” and my mom, who had set her alarm so that she could wake up early enough to possibly catch my dad on a break between Parliament sessions (no such luck) went, “No, but has anyone seen my Free Winona T-shirt?”

And then I went, “Well, I still haven’t found my Queen Amidala underwear.”

And that’s when we all realized it: Someone had stolen our laundry.

It is really the only explanation for it. I mean, we send our laundry out to the Thompson Street laundry-by-the-pound place, and then they do it for us and deliver it all folded and stuff. Since we don’t have a doorman, generally the bag just sits in the vestibule until one of us picks it up and drags it up the three flights of stairs to the loft.

Only apparently no one has seen the bag of laundry we dropped off the day before I left for Genovia! (I guess I am the only one in my family who pays attention to things like laundry—clearly because I am the talentless one, and have nothing deeper to think about than clean underwear.)

Which can only mean that one of those freaky news reporters (who regularly go through our garbage, much to the chagrin of Mr. Molina, our building’s superintendent) found our bag of laundry, and any minute we can expect a groundbreaking news story on the front cover of the Post : OUT OF THE CLOSET : WHAT PRINCESS MIA WEARS , AND WHAT IT

MEANS , ACCORDING TO OUR EXPERTS .

AND THEN THE WHOLE WORLD WILL FIND OUT THAT I WEAR QUEEN AMIDALA PANTIES!

I mean, it is not like I go around advertising that I have Star Wars underwear, or even that I have any kind of lucky panties at all. And by rights, I should have taken my Queen Amidala underwear with me to Genovia, for luck on my Christmas Eve address to my people. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have gone off on that parking-meter tangent.

But whatever, I had been too caught up in the whole Michael thing, and had completely forgotten.

And now it looks like someone has gotten hold of my special lucky underwear, and the next thing you know, it will be showing up on eBay! Seriously! Who is to say a pair of my panties wouldn’t sell like hotcakes? Especially the fact that they are Queen Amidala panties.

I am so, so dead.

Mom has already called the Sixth Precinct to report the theft, but those guys are too busy tracking down real criminals to go after a laundry swiper. They practically laughed her off the phone.

It is all very well for her and Mr. G; all they lost were regular clothes. I am the only one who lost underwear. Worse, my lucky underwear. I fully understand that the men and women who fight crime in this city have more important things to do than look for my underwear.