Princess on the Brink (The Princess Diaries 8)

Lilly just came out of her room with her video camera and said, “Oh, good, POG, I’m glad you’re here. Quick—what are some ways you’d reduce climate-heating pollution so that we don’t experience a climatic disaster equivalent to the ones portrayed in The Day After Tomorrow and Category 6? I mean, if you ruled the world, and not just Genovia.”

“Lilly,” I said. “I am not in the mood to be on your TV show right now.”

“This isn’t for Lilly Tells It Like It Is, it’s for the campaign. Come on, quick. Pretend you’re addressing the Genovian parliament.”

I sighed. “Fine. Well, instead of spending three hundred billion dollars a year extracting and refining fossil fuels, I’d urge world leaders to spend that money developing alternative clean energy resources, like solar, wind, and biofuels.”

“Good,” Lilly said. “What else?”

“Is this part of your scare-the-freshmen-into-voting-for-me thing?” I asked. “Because I’m such a worrywart, I’ve already researched what to do in the event of most disasters??”

“Just answer the question.”

“I’d help developing nations, which are the ones causing the most pollution, switch over to clean energy resources, too. And require automakers to manufacture only gas-electric hybrid cars, and buy back everyone’s SUV, and provide tax breaks to consumers and businesses that switch from fossil fuel burning to solar or wind power.”

“Awesome. Why do you look so funny?”

I put a hand up to my face. I’d been extra careful with my makeup, because Michael would be seeing it extra up close. I didn’t want it to look like I was wearing any. Boys like the natural look. Well, boys like Michael, anyway.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Funny how?” Was I getting a zit? That would be just my luck.

“No. You just look really nervous. Like you’re going to throw up.”

“Oh.” Thank God it wasn’t a zit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“POG.” Lilly lowered the camera and stared at me curiously. “What’s going on? What are you up to? What are you and Michael doing tonight, anyway? He said you had some kind of surprise for him.”

Thank God Michael just came out from his room, carrying his jean jacket and going, “Sorry, I’m ready now.”

I wish I could say the same.

Thursday, September 9, 8 p.m., the Ritz

Have to write fast—Michael is tipping the room service guy. Everything is going perfectly…we got out of the building without anyone suspecting a thing. Michael thinks we’re just having a romantic good-bye dinner for two in my grandmother’s abandoned hotel suite (which, thank God, they’ve cleaned since she left. I don’t think I could go through with this if the place still reeked of Chanel No. 5, as most rooms tend to after Grandmère’s been there). He doesn’t know I’m about to make him the recipient of my Precious Gift.

Ooooh, he’s coming back. I will drop the bomb after dinner…the sex bomb, I mean.

Hey, isn’t that the name of a song?

Thursday, September 9, 10 p.m., taxi home from the Ritz

I can’t believe he—

Oh my God, how am I even going to write this down? I can’t even THINK it, how can I WRITE it???? I really can’t even SEE to write it, the light in here is so bad. I can only see the page when we’re stopped in traffic under a streetlamp.

But since Ephrain Kleinschmidt—that’s my cab driver’s name, according to his license in the bulletproof screen between him and me—took Fifth Avenue and not Park, like I asked, we are stopped in traffic A LOT.

Which is good. No, really, it’s GOOD. Since I guess it means I can hopefully get all my crying out of my system before we get to the loft, so I don’t have to face the Big Interrogation from Mom and Mr. G when I walk in looking like Kirsten Dunst after the hot tub scene from Crazy/Beautiful. You know. Crying hysterically and all.

The crying is really freaking Ephrain Kleinschmidt out. I guess he’s never had a sobbing sixteen-year-old princess in his cab before. He keeps on looking back here in his rearview mirror and trying to hand me Kleenexes from the box on his dashboard.

As if Kleenex is going to help!!!!!

The only thing that’s going to help is getting this down in some kind of lucid manner to help me make sense of it. Because it makes no sense. None of this makes any sense. It CAN’T be happening. It CAN’T.

Except that it is.

I just don’t understand how he could never have TOLD me. I mean, seriously, I thought we had a perfect relationship.