Princess in Pink (The Princess Diaries 5)

Well, that’s it. The strike is officially over.

Grandmère has packed up her things and gone back to the Plaza.

She offered to stay until Rocky comes home from the hospital, to “help” my mom and Mr. G with him until they get on some sort of schedule. Mr. G couldn’t seem to say, “Um, thanks so much for the offer, Clarisse, but no” fast enough.

I have to say, I’m glad. Grandmère would only get in the way of my molding Rocky into the perfect boy. Like you can so tell she’ll always be saying stuff to him like, “Who’s my big boy? Who’s my gwate big widdle man?”

Seriously. You wouldn’t think it of Grandmère, but when we finally got to see Rocky in his little incubator last night, that’s exactly the kind of stuff she was saying, except in French. It was revolting.

I kind of know now why my dad has so many iss

ues with forming lasting relationships with women.

Anyway, the restaurateurs finally caved to the demands of the busboys. They will now all be receiving health benefits and sick time and vacation pay. Well, all except for Jangbu, of course. He collected the money from his life story and flew back to Nepal. I guess city life didn’t really work out all that well for him. Besides, in Nepal, all that money will provide him and his family with financial stability for life—not to mention a palatial mansion. Here in New York, it would have barely bought him a walk-up studio in a bad neighborhood.

Lilly seems to be getting over her disappointment over not having gotten to go to the prom. Tina gave her a full report—about how after Michael unceremoniously abandoned the rest of the band in order to escort me to the hospital, Boris took over lead guitar, even though he’d never played the guitar before in his life.

But of course, being a musical genius, there is no instrument Boris can’t pick up almost instantaneously… except for maybe, like, the accordion, or something. Tina says after we left, things got a little out of hand, with Josh and some of his friends leaning over the side of the observation deck and seeing if they could hit stuff below with their spit. Mr. Wheeton caught them though, and gave them all in-school suspension. Lana supposedly started crying and told Josh he’d ruined the most special night of her life, and that this was how she was going to be forced to remember him when he went off to college next year… hawking loogies off the Empire State Building.

Sweet.

As for me, well, I don’t have to worry: when Michael goes off to college in the fall

it will be just uptown, so I’ll still see him all the time, anyway. Or at least, a lot of the time, and

the memory I’ll have of him is not hawking loogies off the Empire State Building, but of turning to my dad in the maternity waiting room and saying (after I’d asked Dad for the millionth time if, now that I had a baby brother, I could stay in New York for the whole summer and learn to get to know him, and Dad for the millionth time replied that I had signed a contract and had to stick to it), “Actually, sir,legally, minors can’t enter into contracts, and so according to New York State law, you cannot hold Mia to any document she might have signed, as she was under sixteen at the time, making it invalid.”

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RIGHTEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You should have seen my dad’s face! I thought he was going to have a coronary then and there. Good thing we were already at the hospital, just in case he keeled over. George Clooney could have rushed right over with the crash cart.

But he didn’t keel over. Instead, Dad just looked Michael very hard in the face. I am happy to report that Michael just looked right back at him. Then Dad said, all grimly, “Well…we’ll see.”

But you could tell he knew he’d been beat. Oh, my God, it is so GREAT, going out with a genius. It really is.

Even if he hasn’t, you know, mastered the art of strapless bra removal.

Yet.

So I’ve finally got my room back… and it looks like I’ll be staying in the city for at least the majority of the summer… and I have a baby brother… and I wrote my first actual story for the school paper, AND had a poem published… and I think my boyfriend and I might have gotten to second base….

And I got to go to the prom.

TO THE PROM!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, my God. I’m self-actualized.

Again.